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Notre-Dame de Paris 


VICTOR HUGO. 


■1 N SW NLOnK >• I 

ThPAASYÇR'VElUS.C? 


vV^ 








Copyright, 

Bv Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
1891. 


Photogravures by A. W. Elson & Co., Boston. 


T. Y. Crowell & Co., Bookbinders, Boston. 


3 



A FEW years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about 
Kotre-Dame, tbe aiithor of this book found, in an obscure 
nook of one of tbe towers, tbe following word, engraved by 
band upon tbe wall : — 

'ANArKH, 

Tbese Greek capitals, black with âge, and quite deeply 
graven in tbe stone, witb I know not wbat signs peculiar 
to Gotbic caligrapby imprinted upon tbeir forms and upon 
tbeir attitudes, as tbougb witb tbe purpose of revealing tbat 
it bad been a band of tbe Middle Ages wbicb bad inscribed 
tbem tbere, and especially tbe fatal and melancboly meaning 
contained in tbem, struck tbe autbor deeply. 

He questioned bimself ; be sougbt to divine wbo could bave 
been tbat soûl in forment wbicb bad not been willing to quit 
tbis World witbout leaving tbis stigma of crime or unbappi- 
ness upon tbe brow of tbe ancient cburcb. 

Afterwards, tbe wall was wbitewasbed or scraped down, I 
know not wbicb, and tbe inscription disappeared. For it is 

iii 


îv 


P BEF ACE. 


tlius that people hâve been in the habit of proceeding with 
the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two 
hundred years. Mutilations corne to them from every quar- 
ter, from within as well as from without. The priest white- 
washes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the 
populace arrives and demolishes them. 

Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the 
author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains 
to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved 
within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame, — nothing of the 
destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who Avrote 
that Word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the 
générations of man many centuries ago ; the word, in its turn, 
has been effaced from the wall of the church ; the church 
will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the 
earth. 

It is upon this word that this book is founded. 


March, 1831. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


♦ 

VOLUME 1. 

BOOK FIRST. 

CHAPTER 

1. The Grand Hall 1 

II. Pierre Gringoire 17 

III. Monsieur tlie Cardinal 28 

IV. Master Jacques Coppenole .... 36 

V. Quasiinodo 46 

YI. Esmeralda 54 

BOOK SECOND. 

I. From Charybdis to Scylla 57 

II. The Place de Grève 61 

III. Kisses for Blows 64 

IV. The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through 

the Streets in the Evening 75 

V. Resnlt of the Dangers , . . 80 

VI. The Broken Jng 83 

VII. A Bridai Night 103 

BOOK THIRD. 

I. Notre-Dame Il4 

II. A Bird’s-eye View of Paris 124 


V 


CONTENTS. 


VÎ 

BOOK FOURTPI. 

1. Good Soûls O 150 

II. Claude Frollo 155 

III. Imuianis Pecoris Custos, Iminanior Ipse 161 

IV. The Dog and his Master 169 

V. More about Claude Frollo 171 

VI. Unpopularity 178 

BOOK FIFTH. 

I. Abbas Beat! Martini 180 

TI. Tbis will Kill Tbat 191 

BOOK SIXTII. 

I. An Impartial Glance at the Ancien! Magistracy 207 

II. The Rat-bole 219 

III. History of a Leaveiied Cake of Maize 224 

IV. A Tear for a Drop of Water 246 

V. End of tbe Story of tbe Cake 256 



BOOK FIRST. 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE GRAND HALL. 

Three hundred and forty-eight years, six months, and nine- 
teen days ago to-day, the Parisians awoke to the Sound of ail 
the bells in the triple circuit of the city, the university, and 
the town ringing a full peal. 

The sixth of January, 1482, is not, however, a day of which 
history has preserved the memory. There was nothing nota- 
able in the event which thus set the bells and the bourgeois 
of Paris in a ferment from early morning. It was neither an 
assault by the Picards nor the Burgundians, nor a hunt led 
along in procession, nor a revoit of scholars in the town of 
Laas, nor an entry of ^^our much dread lord, monsieur the 
king/’ nor even a pretty hanging of'male and female thieves 
by the courts of Paris. Neither was it the arrivai, so frequent 
in the fifteenth century, of some plumed and bedizened em- 
bassy. It was barely two days since the last cavalcade of 
that nature, that of the Flemish ambassadors charged with 
concluding the marriage between the dauphin and Marguerite 
of Flanders, had made its entry into Paris, to the great annoy- 
ance of M. le Cardinal de Bourbon, who, for the sake of pleas- 
ing the king, had been obliged to assume an amiable mien 
towards this whole rustic rabble of Flemish burgomasters, and 
to” regale them at his Hôtel de Bourbon, with a very “ pretty 

1 


2 


NOTRE-DAME. 


inorality, allegorical satire, and farce, while a driving rain 
drenched the magnificent tapestries at his door. 

What put the ^^whole population of Paris in commotion,’’ as 
Jehan de Troyes expresses it, on the sixth of January, was 
the double solemnity, united from time immémorial, of the 
Epiphany and the Feast of Fools. 

On that day, there was to be a bonfire on the Place de 
Grève, a maypole at the Chapelle de Braque, and a mystery at 
the Palais de Justice. It had been cried, to the sound of the 
trumpet, the preceding evening at ail the cross roads, by the 
provost’s men, clad in handsome, short, sleeveless coats of 
violet camelot, with large white crosses upon their breasts. 

So the crowd of citizens, male and female, having closed 
their houses and shops, thronged from every direction, at 
early morn, towards some one of the three spots designated. 

Each had made his choice; one, the bonfire; another, the 
maypole ; another, the mystery play. It must be stated, in 
honor of the good sense of the loungers of Paris, that the 
greater part of this crowd directed their steps towards the 
bonfire, which was quite in season, or towards the mystery 
play, which was to be presented in the grand hall of the 
Palais de Justice (the courts of law), which was well roofed 
and walled ; and that the curions left the poor, scantily flow- 
ered maypole to shiver ail alone beneath the sky of January, 
in the cemetery of the Chapel of Braque. 

The populace thronged the avenues of the law courts in 
particular, because they knew that the Flemish ambassadors, 
who had arrived two days previously, intended to be présent 
at the représentation of the mystery, and at the élection of 
the Pope of the Fools, which was also to take place in the 
grand hall. 

It was no easy matter on that day, to force one’s way into 
that grand hall, although it was then reputed to be the largest 
covered enclosure in the world (it is true that Sauvai had not 
y et measured the grand hall of the Château of Montargis). 
The palace place, encumbered with people, ofîered to the 
curions gazers at the Windows the aspect of a sea ; into which 
five or six streets, like so many mouths of rivers, discharged 


THE GEANT) HALL. 


3 


every moment fresh fioods of heads. The waves of this 
crowd, augmented incessantly, dashed against the angles of 
the houses which projected here and there, like so many 
promontories, into the irregular basin of the place. In the 
centre of the lofty Gothic * façade of the palace, the grand 
staircase, incessantly ascended and descended by a double car- 
rent, which, after parting on the intermediate landing-place, 
flowed in broad waves along its latéral slopes, — the grand 
staircase, I say, trickled incessantly into the place, like a 
cascade into a lake. The cries, the laughter, the trampling 
of those thousands of feet, produced a great noise and a great 
clamor. From time to time, this noise and clamor redoubled ; 
the carrent which drove the crowd towards the grand stair- 
case flowed backwards, became troubled, formed whirlpools. 
This was produced by the buffet of an archer, or the horse of 
one of the provost’s sergeants, which kicked to restore order ; 
an admirable tradition which the provostship has bequeathed 
to the constablery, the constablery to the maréchaussée^ the 
maréchaussée to our gendarmeri of Paris. 

Thousands of good, calm, bourgeois faces thronged the Win- 
dows, the doors, the dormer Windows, the roofs, gazing at the 
palace, gazing at the populace, and asking nothing more ; for 
many Parisians content themselves with the spectacle of the 
spectators, and a wall behind which something is going on 
becomes at once, for us, a very curious thing indeed. 

If it could be granted to us, the men of 1830, to mingle in 
thought with those Parisians of the flfteenth century, and to 
enter with them, jostled, elbowed,* pulled about, into that 
immense hall of the palace, which was so cramped on that 
sixth of January, 1482, the spectacle would not be devoid of 
either interest or charm, and we should hâve about us only 
things that were so old that they would seem new. 

* The Word Gothic, in the sense in which it is generally employed, is 
wholly unsuitahle, but wholly consecrated. Hence we accept it and 
we adopt it, like ail the rest of the world, to characterize the architecture 
of the second half of the Middle Ages, where the ogive is the principle 
which succeeds the architecture of the first period, of which the semi- 
circle is the father. 


4 


NOTRE-DAME. 


With the reader’s consent, we will endeavor to retrace in 
thought, the impression which he would hâve experienced in 
company with us on Crossing the threshold of that grand hall, 
in the midst of that tumnltuous crowd in surcoats, short, 
sleeveless jackets, and doublets. 

And, first of ail, there is a bnzzing in the ears, a dazzlement 
in the eyes. Above our heads is a double ogive vanlt, pan- 
elled with wood carving, painted azuré, and sown with golden 
fleurs-de-lis ; beneath our feet a pavement of black and white 
marble, alternating. A few paces distant, an enormous pillar, 
then another, then another; seven pillars in ail, down the 
length of the hall, sustaining the spring of the arches of the 
double vanlt, in the centre of its width. Around four of 
the pillars, stalls of merchants, ail sparkling with glass and 
tinsel; around the last three, benches of oak, worn and pol- 
ished by the trunk hose of the litigants, and the robes of the 
attorneys. Around the hall, along the lofty wall, between the 
doors, between the Windows, between the pillars, the intermi- 
nable row of ail the kings of France, from Pharamond down : 
the lazy kings, with pendent anus and downcast eyes; the 
valiant and combative kings, with heads and arms raised 
boldly heavenward. Then in the long, pointed Windows, 
glass of a thonsand hues ; at the wide entrances to the hall, 
rich doors, finely sculptured; and ail, the vanlts, pillars, 
walls, jambs, panelling, doors, statues, covered from top to 
bottom with a splendid bine and gold illumination, which, a 
trifle tarnished at the epoch when we behold it, had almost 
entirely disappeared beneath dust and spiders in the year of 
grâce, 1549, when du Breul still admired it from tradition. 

Let the reader pictnre to himself now, this immense, oblong 
hall, illnminated by the pallid light of a January day, invaded 
by a motley and noisy throng which drifts along the walls, 
and eddies round the seven pillars, and he will hâve a con- 
fused idea of the whole effect of the pictnre, whose curions 
details we shall make an effort to indicate with more pré- 
cision. 

It is certain, that if Eavaillac had not assassinated Henri 
IV., there would hâve been no documents in the trial of 


THE GRAND HALL. 


6 


Ravaillac deposited in the clerk’s office of the Palais de Jus- 
tice, no accoinplices interested in causing the said documents 
to disappear ; hence, no incendiaries obliged, for lack of better 
means, to burn the clerk’s office in order to burn the docu- 
ments, and to burn the Palais de Justice in order to burn the 
clerk’s office ; consequently, in short, no conflagration in 1618. 
The old Palais would be standing still, with its ancient grand 
hall ; I should be able to say to the reader, “ Go and look at 
it,” and we should thus both escape the necessity, — I of 
making, and he of reading, a description of it, such as it is. 
Which demonstrates a new truth ; that great events hâve 
incalculable results. 

It is true that it may be quite possible, in the first place, 
that Ravaillac had no accomplices ; and in the second, that if 
he had any, they were in no way connected with the fire of 
1618. Two other very plausible explanations exist : First, 
the great flaming star, a foot broad, and a cubit high, which 
fell from heaven, as every one knows, upon the law courts, 
after midnight on the seventh of March ; second, Théophile’s 
quatrain, — 

^‘Sure, ’twas but a sorry game 
When at Paris, Dame Justice, 

Through having eaten too much spice, 

Set the palace ail aflame.” 

Whatever may be thought of this triple explanation, politi- 
cal, physical, and poetical, of the burning of the law courts in 
1618, the unfortunate fact of the fire is certain. Very little 
to-day remains, thanks to this catastrophe, — thanks, above 
ail, to the successive restorations which hâve completed what 
it spared, — very little remains of that first dwelling of the 
kings of France, — of that elder palace of the Louvre, already 
so old in the time of Philip the Handsome, that they sought 
there for the traces of the magnificent buildings erected by 
King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything 
lias disappeared. What has become of the chamber of the 
chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his marriage? 
the garden where he administered justice, clad in a coat of 


6 


NOTBE-BAME, 


camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and a 
sur-mantle of black sandal, as lie lay upon tlie carpet with 
Joinville ? Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigis- 
mond ? and that of Charles IV. ? that of Jean the Landless ? 
Where is the staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated 
his edict of pardon ? the slab where Marcel eut the throats of 
Eobert de Clermont and the Marshal of Champagne, in the 
presence of the dauphin ? the wicket where the bulls of 
Pope Benedict were torn, and whence those who had brought 
them departed decked ont, in dérision, in copes and mitres, 
and making an apology through ail Paris ? and the grand 
hall, with its gilding, its azuré, its statues, its pointed arches, 
its pillars, its immense vault, ail fretted with carvings ? and 
the gilded chamber ? and the stone lion, which stood at the 
door, with lowered head and tail between his legs, like the 
lions on the throne of Solomon, in the humiliât ed attitude 
which befits force in the presence of justice ? and the beauti- 
ful doors ? and the stained glass ? and the chased ironwork, 
which drove Biscornette to despair ? and the délicate wood- 
work of Hancy ? What has time, what hâve men done with 
these marvels ? What hâve they given us in return for ail 
this Gallic history, for ail this Gothic art ? The heavy flat- 
tened arches of M. de Brosse, that awkward architect of the 
Saint-Gervais portai. So much for art; and, as for history, 
we hâve the gossiping réminiscences of the great pillar, still 
ringing with the tattle of the Patru. 

It is not much. Let us return to the véritable grand hall 
of the véritable old palace. The two extremities of this 
gigantic parallelogram were occupied, the one by the famous 
marble table, so long, so broad, and so thick that, as the 
ancient land rolls — in a style that would hâve given Gargan- 
tua an appetite — say, ^^such a slice of marble as was never 
beheld in the world ” ; the other by the chapel where Louis XI. 
had himself sculptured on his knees before the Virgin, and 
whither he caused to be brought, without heeding the two 
gaps thus made in the row of royal statues, the statues of 
Charlemagne and of Saint Louis, two saints whom he sup- 
posed to be great in favor in heaven, as kings of Erswice. 


THE GBAND HALL. 


7 


This chapel, quite new, haviiig been built only six years, was 
entirely in that cbarming taste of délicate architecture, of 
marvellous sculpture, of fine and deep chasing, which marks 
with us 'the end of the Gothic era, and which is perpetuated 
to about the middle of the sixteenth century in the fairylike 
fancies of the Eenaissance. The little open-work rose win- 
dow, pierced above the portai, was, in particular, a master- 
piece of lightness and grâce ; one would hâve pronounced it a 
star of lace. 

In the middle of the hall, opposite the great door, a plat- 
form of gold brocade, placed against the wall, a spécial 
entrance to which had been effected through a window in 
the corridor of the gold chamber, had been erected for the 
Flemish emissaries and the other great personages invited to 
the présentation of the mystery play. 

It was upon the marble table that the mystery was to be 
enacted, as usual. It had been arranged for the purpose, 
early in the morning ; its rich slabs of marble, ail scratched 
by the heels of law clerks, supported a cage of carpenter’s 
work of considérable height, the upper surface of which, 
within view of the whole hall, was to serve as the theatre, 
and whose interior, masked by tapestries, was to take the 
place of dressing-rooms for the personages of the piece. A 
ladder, naively placed on the outside, was to serve as means 
of communication between the dressing-room and the stage, 
and lend its rude rungs to outrances as well as to exits. 
There was no personage, however unexpected, no sudden 
change, no theatric^ effect, which was not obliged to mount 
that ladder. Innocent and venerable infancy of art and con- 
trivances ! 

Four of the baililî of the palace’s sergeants, perfunctory 
guardians of ail the pleasures of the people, on days of fes- 
tival as well as on days of execution, stood at the four corners 
of the marble table. 

The piece was only to begin with the twelfth stroke of the 
great palace dock sounding midday. It was very late, no 
doubt, for a theatrical représentation, but they had been 
obliged to fix the hour to suit the convenience of the ambas- 
sadors. 


8 


NOTEE-BAME. 


Now, this whole multitude had been waiting since morning. 
A goodly number of curious, good people had been shivering 
since daybreak before the grand staircase of the palace ; 
some even affirmed that they had passed the night across 
the threshold of the great door, in order to make sure that 
they should be the first to pass in. The crowd grew more 
dense every moment, and, like water, which rises above its 
normal level, began to mount along the walls, to swell around 
the pillars, to spread ont on the entablatures, on the comices, 
on the window-sills, on ail the salient points of the architec- 
ture, on ail the reliefs of the sculpture. Hence, discomfort, 
impatience, weariness, the liberty of a day of cynicism and 
folly, the quarrels which break forth for ail sorts of causes — 
a pointed elbow, an iron-shod shoe, the fatigue of long wait- 
ing — had already, long before the hour appointed for the 
arrivai of the ambassadors, imparted a harsh and bitter 
accent to the clamor of these people who were shut in, fitted 
into each other, pressed, trampled upon, stifled. Nothing 
was to be heard but imprécations on the Flemish, the provost 
of the merchants, the Cardinal de Bourbon, the bailiff of the 
courts. Madame Marguerite of Austria, the sergeants with 
their rods, the cold, the heat, the bad weather, the Bishop 
of Paris, the Pope of the Pools, the pillars, the statues, that 
closed door, that open window ; ail to the vast amusement of 
a band of scholars and lackeys scattered through the mass, 
who mingled with ail this discontent their teasing remarks, 
and their malicious suggestions, and pricked the general bad 
temper with a pin, so to speak. 

Among the rest there was a group of those merry imps, 
who, after smashing the glass in a window, had seated them- 
selves hardily on the entablature, and from that point de- 
spatched their gaze and their railleries both within and 
without, upon the throng in the hall, and the throng upon 
the Place. It was easy to see, from their parodied gestures, 
their ringing laughter^ the bantering appeals which they 
exchanged with their comrades, from one end of the hall to 
the other, that these young clerks did not share the WQ^riness 
and fatigue of the rest of the spectators, and that they under- 


THE GBAND HALL. 


9 


stood very well the art of extracting, for their own private 
diversion, from that which they had under their eyes, a spec- 
tacle which made them await the other with patience. • 

^^Upon my soûl, So it’s you, ‘Joannes Frollo de Molen- 
dino ! ’ cried one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired 
imp, with a well-favored and nialign countenance, clinging to 
the acanthus leaves of a capital; ‘‘you are well named John 
of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs hâve the air 
of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long hâve you 
been here ? ” 

“By the mercy of the devil,” retorted Joannes Frollo, 
“ these four hours and more ; and I hope that they will be 
reckoned to my crédit in purgatory. I heard the eight sing- 
ers.of the King of Sicily intone the first verse of seven o’clock 
mass in the Sainte-Chapelle.’’ 

“ Fine singers ! ” replied the other, “ with voices even more 
pointed than their caps ! Before founding a mass for Mon- 
sieur Saint John, the king should hâve inquired whether 
Monsieur Saint John likes Latin droned out in a Provençal 
accent.” 

“ He did it for the sake of employing those accursed sing- 
ers of the King of Sicily ! ” cried an old woman sharply from 
among the crowd beneath the window. “I just put it to 
you ! A thousand livres parisi for a mass ! ^nd out of the tax 
on sea fish in the markets of Paris, to boot ! ” 

“Peace, old crone,” said a tall, grave person, stopping up 
his nose on the side towards the fishwife ; “ a mass had to be 
founded. Would you wish the king to fall ill again ? ” 

“Bravely spoken. Sire Gilles Lecornu, master furrier of 
the king’s robes ! ” cried the little student, clinging to the 
capital. 

A shout of laughter from ail the students greeted the 
unlucky name of the poor furrier of the king’s robes. 

“ Lecornu ! Gilles Lecornu ! ” said some. 

“ Cornutus et hirsutus, horned and hairy,” another went on. 

“ He ! of course,” continued the small imp on the capital, 
“What are they laughing at? An honorable man is Gilles 
Lecornu, brother of Master Jehan Lecornu, provost of the 


10 


NOTRE-DAME. 


king^s house, son of Master Mahiet Lecornu, first porter of 
the Bois de Vincennes, — ail bourgeois of Paris, ail married, 
from father to son.’’ 

The gayety redonbled. The big furrier, without utter^’' 
Word in reply, tried to escape ail the eyes riveted upon him 
from ail sides ; but he perspired and panted in vain ; like a 
wedge entering the wood, his efforts served only to bury still 
more deeply in the shoulders of his neighbors, his large, » 
plectic face, purple with spite and rage. 

At length one of these, as fat, short, and venerable a: him- 
self, came to his rescue. 

‘^Abomination! scholars addressing a bourgeois in that 
fashion in my day would hâve been flogged with a fagot, 
which would hâve afterwards been used to burn them.” 

The whole band burst into laughter. 

“ Holà hé ! who is scolding so ? Who is that screech w i O 
evil fortune ? ” 

“Hold, I know him,” said one of them; “’tis Master 
Andry Musnier.” 

“Because he is one of the four sworn booksellers the 
university ! ” said the other. 

“Everything goes by fours in that shop,” cried a V. 

“the four nations, the four faculties, the four feasts, i 
procurators, the four electors, the four booksellers.” 

“ Well,” began Jean Erollo once more, “we must play th 
devil with them.” * 

“ Musnier, we’ll burn your books.” 

“ Musnier, we’ll beat your lackeys.” 

“ Musnier, we’ll kiss your wife.” 

“ That fine, big Mademoiselle Oudarde.” 

“Who is as fresh and as gay as though she were a widov, 

“ Devil take you ! ” growled Master Andry Musnier. 

“Master Andry,” pursued Jean Jehan, still clinging to his 
capital, “ hold your tongue, or l’il drop on your head ! ” 

Master Andry raised his eyes, seemed to measure ki 
instant the height of the pillar, the weight of the «cam 


Faire le diable à quatre. 


THE GRAND HALL. H 

mentally multiplied that weight by the square of the ve- 
locity, and remained silent. 

Jehan, master of the field of battle, pursued triumphantly : 
p//,That’s what l’il do, even if I am the brother of an arch- 
d'eacon ! ’’ 

‘^Fine gentry are our people of the university, not to hâve 
ipaused our privilèges to be respected on such a day as this ! 
.(]ijpwever, there is a maypole and a bonfire in the town ; a 

s stery. Pope of the Pools, and Flemish ambassadors in the 
City and, at the university, nothing ! ’’ 

^^Nevertheless, the Place Haubert is sufficiently large!’’ 
interposed one of the clerks established on the window-sill. 

“ Down with the rector, the electors, and the procurators ! ” 
cried Joannes. 

We must hâve a bonfire this evening in the Champ-Gail- 
yaiiw,.-» ,went on the other, ‘^made of Master Andry’s books.” 

“ And the desks of the scribes ! ” added his neighbor. 

. And the beadles’ wands ! ” 

And the spittoons of the deans ! ” 

•'»-^,'.nd the cupboards of the procurators ! ” 

And the hutches of the electors ! ” 

. ^^xu'^nd the stools of the rector ! ” 

•lijoi^ Jîpwn with them ! ” put in little J ehan, as counterpoint ; 

wn with Master Andry, the beadles and the scribes; the 
Qtheoiogians, the doctors and the decretists; the procurators, 
electors and the rector ! ” 

The end of the world has corne ! ” muttered Master Andry, 
stoppifig up his ears. 

‘‘ By the way, there’s the rector ! see, he is passing through 
^he Place,” cried one of those in the window. 
r £ach rivalled his neighbor in his haste to turn towards the 

^‘i.^it really our venerable rector. Master Thibaut?” de- 
manded Jehan Frollo du Moulin, who, as he was clinging to 
- ne of the inner pillars, could not see what was going on out- 
^ide. 

^'"^es, yes,” replied ail the others, is really he, Master 
Thibaut, the rector.” 


12 


NOTRE-DAME. 


It was, in fact, the rector and ail the dignitaries of the 
nniversitj, who were marching in procession in front of the 
embassy, and at that moment traversing the Place. The stu- 
dents crowded into the window, saluted them as they passed 
with sarcasms and ironical applanse. The rector, who was 
walking at the head of his company, had to support the first 
broadside ; it was severe. 

Good day, monsieur le recteur ! Holà hé ! good day 
there ! ” 

How does lie manage to be here, the old gambler ? Has 
he abandoned his dice ? ’’ 

How he trots along on his mule ! her ears are not so long 
as his ! ” 

^‘Holà hé ! good day, monsieur le recteur Thibaut ! Tyhalde 
aleator ! Old fool ! old gambler ! ’’ 

God preserve vou ! Hid you throw double six often last 
night?” 

^^Oh! what a décrépit face, livid and haggard and drawn 
with the love of gambling and of dice ! ’’ 

Where are you bound for in that fashion, Thibaut, Tybalde 
ad dados, with your back turned to the university, and trot- 
ting towards the town ? ” 

“ He is on his way, no doubt, to seek a lodging in the Eue 
Thibautodé ? * cried Jehan du M. Moulin. 

The entire band repeated this quip in a voice of thunder, 
clapping their hands furiously. 

“You are going to seek a lodging in the Eue Thibautodé, 
are you not, monsieur le recteur, gamester on the side of the 
devil ? ’’ 

Then came the turns of the other dignitaries. 

“ Down with the beadles ! down with the mace-bearers ! ’’ 

“ Tell me, Eobin Pouissepain, who is that yonder ? ” 

“He is Gilbert de Suilly, Gilhertus de Soliaco, the chancel- 
ier of the College of Autun.” 

“ Hold on, here’s my shoe ; you are better placed than I, 
fling it in his face.’’ 


* Thibaut au des, — Thibaut of the dice. 


THE GRAND HALL. 


13 


Saturnalitias mittimus ecce nuces?'* 

^^Down with the six theologians, with their wMte sur- 
plices ! ” 

Are tliose the theologians ? I thought they were the 
white geese given by Sainte-Geneviève to the city, for the 
fief of Eoogny.” 

Down with the doctors ! 

Down with the cardinal disputations, and quibblers ! ’’ 
^‘My cap to y ou, Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève! You 
hâve done me a wrong. ^Tis true ; he gave my place in the 
nation of ISTormandy to little Ascanio Dalzapada, who cornes 
from the province of Bourges, since he is an Italian.’’ 

“ That is an injustice,” said ail the scholars. Down with 
the Chancellor of Sainte-Geneviève ! ” 

Ho hé ! Master J oachim de Ladehors ! Ho hé ! Louis 
Dahuille ! Ho hé Lambert Hoctement ! ” 

May the devil stifle the procurator of the German nation ! ” 
And the chaplains of the Sainte-Chapelle, with their gray 
amices; cum tunices grisis I ” 

Seu de pellîbus grisis fourratis ! ” 

Holà hé ! Masters of Arts ! Ail the beautiful black copes ! 
ail the fine red copes ! ” 

They make a fine tail for the rector.” 

^^One would say that he was a Doge of Venice on his way 
to his bridai with the sea.” 

Say, Jehan ! here are the canons of Sainte-Geneviève ! ” 

To the deuce with the whole set of canons ! ” 

Abbé Claude Choart ! Doctor Claude Choart ! Are you in 
search of Marie la Giffarde ? ” 

She is in the Eue de Glatigny.” 

She is making the bed of the king of the debauchees.” 

She is paying her four deniers * quatuor denarios.^^ 

Aut unum homhum'^ 

Would you like to hâve her pay you in the face ? ” 
Comrades ! Master Simon Sanguin, the Elector of Pic- 
ardy, with his wife on the crupper ! ” 

* An old French coin, equal to the two hundred and fortieth part of a 
silver pound. 


14 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Post equitem sedet atra cura — behind the borsenian sits 
black care.’’ 

Courage, Master Simon ! ” 

Good day, Mister Elector ! ’’ 

Good night, Madame Electress ! ’’ 

^^How happy they are to see ail that !” sighed Joannes de 
Molendino, still percbed in the foliage of his capital. 

Meanwhile, the sworn bookseller of the university, Master 
Andry Musnier, was inclining his ear to the furrier of the 
king’s robes, Master Gilles Lecornu. 

‘‘ I tell y ou, sir, that the end of the world has corne. hTo 
one has ever beheld such outbreaks among the students ! It is 
the accursed inventions of this century that are ruining 
everything, — artilleries, bombards, and, above ail, printing, 
that other German pest. No more manuscripts, no more 
books ! printing will kill bookselling. It is the end of the 
World that is drawing nigh.” 

see that plainly, from the progress of velvet stuffs,” 
said the fur-merchant. 

At this moment, midday sounded. 

^‘Ha!” exclaimed the entire crowd, in one voice. 

The scholars held their peace. Then a great hurly-burly 
ensued ; a vast mo veinent of feet, hands, and heads ; a general 
outbreak of coughs and handkerchiefs ; each one arranged 
himself, assumed his post, raised himself up, and grouped 
himself. Then came a great silence ; ail necks remained out- 
stretched, ail mouths remained open, ail glances were directed 
towards the marble table. Nothing made its appearance 
there. The bailifl’s four sergeants were still there, stiff, 
motionless, as painted statues. Ail eyes turned to the estrade 
reserved for the Elemish envoys. The door remained closed, 
the platform empty. This crowd had been waiting since day- 
break for three things : noonday, the émbassy from Elanders, 
the mystery play. Noonday alone had arrived on time. 

On this occasion, it was too much. 

They waited one, two, three, five minutes, a quarter of an 
hour ; nothing came. The dais remained empty, the theatre 
dumb. In the meantime, wrath had succeeded to impatience. 


THE GRAJSfD HALL, 


15 


Irritated words circulated in a low tone, still, it is true. 
“ The mystery ! the mystery ! ” they murmured, in hollow 
voices. Heads began to ferment. A tempest, which was 
only rumbling in the distance as yet, was floating on the 
surface of this crowd. It was Jehan du Moulin who struck 
the first spark from it. 

‘‘ The mystery, and to the devil with the Flemings ! ” he 
exclaimed at the fnll force of his lungs, twining like a ser- 
pent aronnd his pillar. 

The crowd clapped their hands. 

The mystery ! ” it repeated, “ and may ail the devils take 
Flanders ! ” 

‘‘We must hâve the mystery instantly,’^ resumed the stu- 
dent ; or else, my advice is that we should hang the bailiff 
of the courts, by way of a morality and a comedy.’’ 

^^Well said,” cried the people, ^^and let us begin the hang- 
ing with his sergeants.’^ 

A grand acclamation followed. The four poor fellows 
began to turn pale, and to exchange glances. The crowd 
hurled itself towards them, and they already beheld the 
frail wooden railing, which separated them from it, giving 
way and bending before the pressure of the throng. 

It was a critical moment. 

To the sack, to the sack ! ” rose the cry on ail sides. 

At that moment, the tapestry of the dressing-room, which 
we hâve described above, was raised, and afforded passage to a 
personage, the mere sight of whom suddenly stopped the crowd, 
and changed its wrath into cnriosity as by enchantment. 

Silence! silence!^’ 

The personage, but little reassnred, and trembling in . every 
limb, advanced to the edge of the marble table with a vast 
amonnt of bows, which, in proportion as he drew nearer, more 
and more resembled genuflections. 

In the meanwhile, tranqnillity had gradnally been restored. 
AU that remained was that slight murmur which always rises 
above the silence of a crowd. 

Messieurs the bourgeois,’^ said he, ^^and mesdemoiselles 
the bourgeoises^ we shall hâve the honor of declaiming and 


16 


NOTBE-BAME, 


l 


representing, before bis eminence, monsieur the cardinal, a 
very beautiful morality whicb bas for its title, ‘ Tbe Good 
Judgment of Madame tbe Virgin Mary.’ I am to play Jupi- 
ter. His eminence is, at tbis moment, escorting tbe very 
honorable embassy of tbe Duke of Austria; wbicb is de- 
tained, at présent, listening to tbe harangue of monsieur tbe 
rector of tbe university, at the gâte Baudets. As soon as his 
illustrious eminence, tbe cardinal, arrives, we will begin.” 

It is certain, that notbing less than tbe intervention of 
J upiter was required to save the four unfortunate sergeants 
of the bailiff of the courts. If we had tbe happiness of having 
invented tbis very veracious taie, and of being, in conséquence, 
responsible for it before our Lady Criticism, it is not against 
us tbat the classic precept, Nec deiis intersit, could be invoked. 
Moreover, tbe costume of Seigneur Jupiter, was very handsome, 
and contributed not a little towards calming the crowd, by 
attracting ail its attention. Jupiter was clad in a coat of 
mail, covered witb black velvet, with gilt nails ; and bad it 
not been for tbe rouge, and tbe huge red beard, eacb of wbicb 
covered one-half of bis face, — bad it not been for the roll of 
gilded cardboard, spangled, and ail bristling witb strips of 
tinsel, wbicb he held in bis hand, and in wbicb the eyes 
of the initiated easily recognized tbunderbolts, — had not his 
feet been flesh-colored, and banded with ribbons in Greek 
fashion, he might bave borne comparison, so far as the se- 
verity of his mien was concerned, witb a Breton archer from 
tbe guard of Monsieur de Berry. 



CHAPTER IL 


PIERRE GRINGOIRE. 

Nevertheless, as he harangued them, the satisfaction and 
admiration nnanimously excited by bis costume were dissi- 
pated by bis words ; and wben be reacbed tbat untoward con- 
clusion : As soon as bis illustrions eminence, tbe cardinal, 
arrives, we will begin, ^^bis voice was drowned in a tbunder 
of booting. 

Begin instantly ! Tbe mystery ! tbe mystery immedi- 
ately ! ” sbrieked tbe people. And above ail tbe voices, tbat 
of Jobannes de Molendino was audible, piercing tbe uproar 
like tbe fife’s derisive serenade : Commence instantly ! ” 
yelped tbe scbolar. 

“Down witb Jupiter and tbe Cardinal de Bourbon!’^ vocif- 
erated Robin Poussepain and tbe otber clerks percbed in tbe 
window. 

“ Tbe morality tbis very instant ! ” repeated tbe crowd ; 
tbis very instant ! tbe sack and tbe rope for tbe comedians, 
and tbe cardinal ! ’’ 

Poor Jupiter, baggard, frigbtened, pale beneatb bis rouge, 
dropped bis tbunderbolt, took bis cap in bis band ; tben be 
bowed and trembled and stammered : “ His eminence — 
tbe ambassadors — Madame Marguerite of Elanders — He 
did not know wbat to say. In trutb, be was afraid of being 
bung. 

Hung by tbe populace for waiting, bung by tbe cardinal for 
not baving waited, be saw between tbe two dilemmas only an 
abyss j tbat is to say, a gallows. 

17 


18 


NOTBE-T)AME. 


Luckily, some one came to rescue him from his embarrass- 
ment, and assume the responsibility. 

An individual who was standing beyond the railing, in the 
free space around the marble table, and whom no one had yet 
caiight sight of, since his long, thin body was completely shel- 
tered from every visual ray by the diameter of the pillar 
against which he was leaning; this individual, we say, tall, 
gaunt, pallid, blond, still young, although already wrinkled 
about the brow and cheeks, with brilliant eyes and a smiling 
mouth, clad in garments of black serge, worn and shining 
with âge, approached the marble table, and made a sign to the 
poor sufferer. But the other was so confused that he did not 
see him. The new corner advanced another step. 

“Jupiter,’’ said he, “my dear Jupiter!” 

The other did not hear. 

At last, the tall blond, driven ont of patience, shrieked 
almost in his face, — 

“ Michel Giborne ! ” 

“ Who calls me ? ” said J upiter, as though awakened with a 
start. 

“ I,” replied the person clad in black. 

“ Ah ! ” said J upiter. 

“ Begin at once,” went on the other. “ Satisfy the popu- 
lace; I undertake to appease the bailiff, who will appease 
monsieur the cardinal.” 

Jupiter breathed once more. 

“Messeigneurs the bourgeois;^ he cried, at the top of his 
lungs to the crowd, which continued to hoot him, “ we are 
going to begin at once.” 

“AVoe Jupiter! Plaudite cives! Ail bail, Jupiter! Ap- 
plaud, citizens ! ” shouted the scholars. 

“Noël! Noël! good, good,” shouted the people. 

The hand clapping was deafening, and Jupiter had already 
withdrawn under his tapestry, while the hall still trembled 
with acclamations. 

In the meanwhile, the personage who had so magically 
turned the tempest into dead calm, as our old and dear Cor- 
neille puts it, had modestly retreated to the half-shadow of 


PIERRE GRINGOIRE. 


19 


his pillar, and would, no donbt, hâve remai ned invisible there, 
motionless, and mute as before, had he not been plucked by 
the sleeve by two young women, who, standing in the front 
row of the spectators, had noticed his colloquy with Michel 
Giborne- J upiter . 

Master/’ said one of them, making him a sign to approach. 

Hold your tongue, my dear Liénarde/’ said her neighbor, 
pretty, fresh, and very brave, in conséquence of being dressed 
up in her best attire. He is not a clerk, he is a layman ; 
you must not say master to him, but messire.” 

‘‘ Messire,” said Liénarde. 

The stranger approached the railing. 

“ What would you hâve of me, damsels ? ” he asked, with 
alacrity. 

Oh ! nothing,” replied Liénarde, in great confusion ; ‘‘ it 
is my neighbor, Gisquette la Gencienne, who wishes to speak 
with you.” 

“Not so,” replied Gisquette, blushing; “it was Liénarde 
who called you master ; I only told her to say messire.” 

The two young girls dropped their eyes. The man, who 
asked nothing better than to enter into conversation, looked 
at them with a smile. 

“ So you hâve nothing to say to me, damsels ? ” 

“ Oh ! nothing at ail,” replied Gisquette. 

“Nothing,” said Liénarde. 

The tall, light-haired young man retreated a step ; but the 
two curious maidens had no mind to let slip their prize. 

“Messire,” said Gisquette, with the impetuosity of an 
open sluice, or of a Avoman who has made up her mind, 
“ do you know that soldier who is to play the part of Madame 
the Virgin in the mystery ? ” 

“You mean the part of Jupiter ? ” replied the stranger 

“ Hé ! yes,” said Liénarde, “ isn’t she stupid ? So you knoAV 
Jupiter ? ” 

“Michel Giborne?” replied the unknown; “yes, madam.” 

“ He has a fine beard ! ” said Liénarde. 

“ Will what they are about to say here be fine ? ” inquired 
Gisquette, timidly. 


20 


NOTEE-BAME. 


^^Very fine, mademoiselle,” replied the unknown, witliout 
the sliglitest hésitation. 

What is it to be ? ” said Liénarde. , 

^^‘The Good Judgment of Madame the Virgin,’ — a moral- 
ity, if you please, damsel.” 

Ah ! that makes a différence,” responded Liénarde. 

A brief silence ensued — broken by the stranger. 

“It is a perfectly new morality, and one which has ne ver 
yet been played.” 

“ Then it is not the same one,” said Gisqnette, “ that was 
given two years ago, on the day of the entrance of monsieur 
the legate, and where three handsome maids played the 
parts — ” 

“ Of sirens,” said Liénarde. 

“ And ail naked,” added the young man. 

Liénarde lowered her eyes modestly. Gisqnette glanced at 
her and did the same. He continued, with a smile, — 

“ It was a very pleasant thing ,to see. To-day it is a moral- 
ity made expressly for Madame the Demoiselle of Flanders.” 

“Will they sing shepherd songs ?” inquired Gisqnette. 

“ Fie ! ” said the stranger, “ in a morality ? you must not 
confound styles. If it were a farce, well and good.” 

“That is a pity,” resumed Gisqnette. “That day, at the 
Ponceau Fonntain, there were wild men and women, who 
fonght and assumed many aspects, as they sang little motets 
and bergerettes.” 

“ That which is suitable for a legate,” retnrned the stran- 
ger, with a good deal of dryness, “ is not suitable for a prin- 
cess.” 

“ And beside them,” resumed Liénarde, “ played many brass 
instruments, making great mélodies.” 

“And for the refreshment of the passers-by,” continued 
Gisqnette, “ the fountain spouted through three mouths, 
wine, milk, and hippocrass, of which every one drank who 
wished.” 

“ And a little below the Ponceau, at the Trinity,” pursued 
Liénarde, “there was a passion performed, and without any 
speaking.” 


PIERRE GRINGOIRE. 21 

How well I remember that ! ” exclaimed Gisquette ; God 
on the cross, and tbe two thieves on the right and the left.” 

Here the yonng gossips, growing warin at the memory of 
the entjance of monsieur the legate, both began to talk at 
once. 

And, further on, at the Painters’ Gâte, there were other 
personages, very richly clad.’’ 

^‘And at the fountain of Saint-Innocent, that huntsman, 
who was chasing a hind with great clamor of dogs and hunt- 
ing-horns.” 

‘^And at the Paris slaughter-houses, stages, representing 
the fortress of Dieppe ! ’’ 

And when the legate passed, you remember, Gisquette ? 
they made the assault, and the English ail had their throats 
eut.” 

And against the gâte of the Châtelet, there were very fine 
personages ! ” 

And on the Port au Change, which was ail draped above ! ” 

And when the legate passed, they let fly on the bridge 
more than two huridred sorts of birds; wasn’t it beautiful, 
Liénarde ? ” 

“ It will be better to-day,” finally resumed their interlocu- 
tor, who seemed to listen to them with impatience. 

Do you promise us that this mystery will be fine ? ” said 
Gisquette. 

Without doubt,” he replied ; then he added, with a cer- 
tain emphasis, — I am the author of it, damsels.” 

“ Truly ? ” said the young girls, quite taken aback. 

“ Truly ! ” replied the poet, bridling a little ; “ that is, to 
say, there are two of us ; J ehan Marchand, who has sawed the 
planks and erected the framework of the theatre and the 
woodwork ; and I, who hâve made the piece. My name is 
Pierre Gringoire.” 

The author of the Cid ” could not hâve said Pierre Cor- 
neille ” with more pride. 

Our readers hâve been able to observe, that a certain 
amount of time must hâve already elapsed from the moment 
when Jupiter had retired beneath the tapestry to the instant 


22 


NOTBE-BAME. 


Avhen the author of the new morality had thus abruptly 
revealed liimself to the innocent admiration of Gisqiiette 
and Liénarde. Remarkable fact: that whole orowd, so 
tumultnous but a few moments before, now waited amiably 
on the Word of the comedian ; which proves the eternal truth, 
still experienced every day in our théâtres, that the best 
means of making the public wait patiently is to assure them 
that one is about to begin instantly. 

However, scholar Johannes had not f allen asleep. 

“ Holà hé ! ’’ he shouted suddenly, in the midst of the peace- 
able waiting which had followed the tumult. ^‘Jupiter, Ma- 
dame the Virgin, buffoons of the devil ! are you jeering at us ? 
The piece ! the piece ! commence or we will commence again ! ” 

This was ail that was needed. 

The music of high and low instruments immediately became 
audible from the interior of the stage ; the tapestry was 
raised; four personages, in motley attire and painted faces, 
emerged from it, climbed the steep ladder of the theatre, and, 
arrived upon the upper platform, arranged themselves in a 
line before the public, whom they saluted with profound rev- 
erences ; then the symphony ceased. 

The mystery was about to begin. 

The four personages, after having reaped a rich reward 
of applause for their reverences, began, in the midst of 
profound silence, a prologue, which we gladly spare the 
reader. Moreover, as happens in our own day, the public 
was more occupied with the costumes that the actors wore 
than with the rôles that they were enacting ; and, in truth, 
they were right. Ail four were dressed in parti-colored robes 
of yellow and white, which were distinguished from each other 
only by the nature of the stuif ; the first was of gold and silver 
brocade ; the second, of silk ; the third, of wool ; the fourth, 
of linen. The first of these personages carried in his right 
hand a sword ; the second, two golden keys ; the third, a pair 
of scales ; the fourth, a spade : and, in order to aid sluggish 
minds which would not hâve seen clearly through the trans- 
parency of these attributes, there was to be read, in large, 
black letters, on the hem of the robe of brocade, My Hame 


PIEBBE GBINGOIBE. 


23 


is Nobility ; on the hem of the silken robe, My Name is 
Clergy ; on the hem of the woolen robe, My Name is Mer- 
CHANDisE ; on the hem of the linen robe, My Name is Labor. 
The sex of the two male characters was briefly indicated to 
every judicious spectator, by their shorter robes, and by the 
cap which they wore on their heads ; while the two female 
characters, less briefly clad, were covered with hoods. 

Much ill-will would also hâve been required, not to compre- 
hend, through the medium of the poetry of the prologue, that 
Labor was wedded to Merchandise, and Clergy to Nobility, 
and that the two happy couples possessed in common a mag- 
niflcent golden dolphin, which they desired to adjudge to the 
fairest only. So they were roaming about the world seeking 
and searching for this beauty, and, after having successively 
rejected the Queen of Golconda, the Princess of Trebizonde, 
the daughter of the Grand Khan of Tartary, etc., Labor and 
Clergy, Nobility and Merchandise, had corne to rest upon the 
marble table of the Palais de Justice, and to utter, in the 
presence of the honest audience, as many sentences and 
maxims as could then be dispensed at the Faculty of Arts, , 
at examinations, sophisms, determinances, flgures, and acts, 
where the masters took their degrees. 

Ail this was, in fact, very flne. 

Nevertheless, in that throng, upon which the four allégories 
vied with each other in pouring out floods of metaphors, 
there was no ear more attentive, no heart that palpitated 
more, not an eye was more haggard, no neck more out- 
stretched, than the eye, the ear, the neck, and the heart of 
the author, of the poet, of that brave Pierre Gringoire, who 
had not been able to resist, a moment before, the joy of tell- 
in g his name to two pretty girls. He had retreated a few 
paces from them, behind his pillar, and there he listened, 
looked, enjoyed. The amiable applause which had greeted the 
beginning of his prologue was still echoing in his bosom, 
and he was completely absorbed in that species of ecstatic 
contemplation with which an author beholds his ideas fall, 
one by one, from the mouth of the actor into the vast silence 
of the audience. Worthy Pierre Gringoire ! 


24 


NOTBE-DAME. 


It pains us to say it, but tbis first ecstasy was speedily dis- 
turbed. Hardly had Gringoire raised this intoxicating cup of 
joy and triumph to bis lips, wben a drop of bitterness was 
mingled witb it. 

A tattered mendicant, wbo could not collect any coins, lost 
as be was in tbe midst of tbe crowd, and wbo bad not proba- 
bly found sufficient indemnity in tbe pockets of bis neigbbors, 
bad bit upon tbe idea of percbing bimself upon some conspic- 
uous point, in order to attract looks and alins. He bad, 
accordingly, boisted bimself, during tbe first verses of tbe 
prologue, witb tbe aid of tbe pillars of tbe reserve gallery, to 
tbe comice wbicb ran round tbe balustrade at its lower edge ; 
and tbere be bad seated bimself, soliciting tbe attention and 
tbe pity of tbe multitude, witb bis rags and a bideous sore 
wbicb covered bis rigbt arm. However, be uttered not a 
Word. 

Tbe silence wbicb be preserved allowed tbe prologue to 
proceed witbout bindrance, and no perceptible disorder would 
bave ensued, if ill-luck bad not willed tbat tbe scbolar J oannes 
sbould catcb sigbt, from tbe beigbts of bis pillar, of tbe 
mendicant and bis grimaces. A wild fit of laugbter took 
possession of tbe young scamp, wbo, witbout caring tbat be 
was interrupting tbe spectacle, and disturbing tbe universal 
composure, sbouted boldly, — 

“ Look ! see tbat sickly créature asking alms ! ’’ 

Any one wbo bas tbrown a stone into a frog pond, or fired a 
sbot into a covey of birds, can form an idea of tbe effect pro- 
duced by tbese incongruous words, in tbe midst of tbe general 
attention. It made Gringoire sbudder as tbougb it bad been 
an electric sbock. Tbe prologue stopped sbort, and ail beads 
turned tumultuously towards tbe beggar, wbo, far from being 
disconcerted by tbis, saw, in tbis incident, a good oppor- 
tunity for reaping bis barvest, and wbo began to.wbine in 
a doleful way, balf closing bis eyes tbe wbile, — Cbarity, 
please ! ” 

‘‘Well — upon my soûl,’’ resumed Joannes, ^Gt’s Clopin 
Trouillefou ! Holà bé, my friend, did your sore botber yon 
on tbe leg, tbat y ou bave transferred it to your arm ? ” 


PIERRE GRINGOIRE. 


25 


So saying, with the dexterity of a monkey, he flung a bit of 
silver into the gray f elt bat which the beggar held in bis ail 
ing arm. Tbe mendicant received botb tbe alms and tbe sar- 
casm witbout wincing, and continued, in lamentable tones, — 
Cbarity, please ! ’’ 

Tbis épisode considerably distracted tbe attention of tbe 
audience; and a goodly number of spectators, among tbem 
Robin Poussepain, and ail tbe clerks at tbeir bead, gayly 
applauded tbis eccentric duet, wbicb tbe scbolar, witb bis 
sbrill voice, and tbe mendicant bad just improvised in tbe 
middle of tbe prologue. 

Gringoire was bigbly displeased. On recovering from bis 
first stupéfaction, be bestirred bimself to sbout, to tbe four 
personages on tbe stage, Go on ! Wbat tbe devil ! — go on ! ’’ 
— witbout even deigning to cast a glance of disdain upon tbe 
two interrupters. 

At tbat moment, be felt some one pluck at tbe bem of bis 
surtout; be turned round, and not witbout ill-bumor, and 
found considérable difficulty in smiling; but be was obliged 
to do so, nevertbeless. It was tbe pretty arm of Gisquette la 
Gencienne, wbicb, passed tbrougb tbe railing, was soliciting 
bis attention in tbis manner. 

Monsieur,” said tbe young girl, ‘’are tney going to con- 
tinue ? ” 

Of course,” replied Gringoire, a good deal sbocked by tbe 
question. 

^^In tbat case, messire,” sbe resumed, would you bave tbe 
courtesy to explain to me — ” 

^^Wbat tbey are about to say ? ” interrupted Gringoire. 
^^Well, listen.” 

No,” said Gisquette, but wbat tbey bave said so far.” 

Gringoire started, like a man whose wound bas been probed 
to tbe quick. 

A plague on tbe stupid and dull-witted little girl ! ” be 
muttered, between bis teetb. 

From tbat moment fortb, Gisquette was notbing to 
bim. 

In tbe meantime, tbe actors bad obeyed bis injunction, and 


26 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the public, seeing that they were beginning to speak again, 
began once more to listen, not without having lost many 
beauties in tbe sort of soldered joint whicb was formed 
between tbe two portions of tbe piece tbus abruptly eut 
sbort. Gringoire commented on it bitterly to bimself. IS'ev- 
ertbeless, tranquillity was gradually restored, tbe scbolar beld 
bis peace, tbe mendicant counted over some coins in bis bat, 
and tbe piece resumed tbe upper band. 

It was, in fact, a very fine work, and one whicb, as it seems 
to us, might be put to use to-day, by tbe aid of a little re- 
arrangement. The exposition, rather long and rather empty> 
that is to say, according to tbe rules, was simple ; and Grin- 
goire, in tbe candid sanctuary of bis own conscience, admired 
its clearness. As tbe reader may surmise, tbe four allegorical 
personages were somewhat weary witb having traversed tbe 
tbree sections of tbe world, without having found suitable 
opportunity for getting rid of their golden dolphin. There- 
upon a eulogy of tbe marvellous fish, witb a tbousand délicate 
allusions to tbe young betrothed of Marguerite of Elanders, 
tben sadly cloistered in at Amboise, and without a suspicion 
that Labor and Clergy, ISTobility and Merebandise bad just 
made tbe circuit of tbe world in bis bebalf. Tbe said dau- 
phin was tben young, was bandsome, was stout, and, above 
ail (magnificent origin of ail royal virtues), be was tbe son of 
tbe Lion of France. I déclaré that this bold metapbor is 
admirable, and that tbe natural history of tbe theatre, on a 
day of allegory and royal marriage songs, is not in tbe least 
startled by a dolphin wbo is tbe son of a lion. It is precisely 
these rare and Pindaric mixtures whicb prove tbe poet’s entbu- 
siasm. Nevertbeless, in order to play tbe part of critic also, 
tbe poet might bave developed tbis beautiful idea in some- 
tbing less than two bundred lines. It is true that tbe mys- 
tery was to last from noon until four o’clock, in accordance 
witb tbe orders of monsieur tbe provost, and that it was 
necessary to say sometbing. Besides, tbe people listened 
patiently. 

Ail at once, in tbe very middle of a quarrel between Mad- 
emoiselle Merebandise and Madame Nobility, at tbe moment 


THE GRAND HALL. 27 

when Monsieur Labor was giving utterance to this wonderful 
line, — 

In forest ne’er was seen a more triumpliant beast; 

the door of thé' reserved gallery which. had hitherto reinained 
so inopportimely closed, opened still more inopportun ely ; and 
the ringing voice of the usher announced abruptly, ‘^His 
eminence, Monseigneur the Cardinal de Bourbon.’^ 




CHAPTEE IIL 

MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL. 

PooR Gringoire ! the din of ail the great double pétards of 
tbe Saint- Jean, tbe discharge of twenty arquebuses on sup- 
ports, the détonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower 
of Billy, which, during the siégé of Paris, on Sunday, the 
twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at 
one blow, the explosion of ail the powder stored at the gâte 
of the Temple, would hâve rent his ears less rudely at that 
solemn and dramatic moment, than these few words, which 
fell from the lips of the usher, His eminence, Monseigneur 
the Cardinal de Bourbon.” 

It is not that Pierre Gringoire either feared or disdained 
monsieur the cardinal. He had neither the weakness nor the 
audacity for that. A true eclectic, as it would be expressed 
nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate 
and calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves 
amid ail circumstances {stare in dimidio reruvi), and who 
are full of reason and of liberal philosophy, while still set- 
ting store by cardinals. A rare, precions, and never inter- 
rupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like another 
Ariadne, seems to hâve given a clew of thread which they 
hâve been walking along unwinding since the beginning of 
the World, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds 
them in ail âges, ever the same ; that is to say, always accord- 
in g to ail times. And, without reckoning our Pierre Grin- 
^oire, who may represent them in the fifteenth century if we 

28 


41 


MONSIEUn THE CARDINAL. 


29 


succeed in bestowing upon liim the distinction Avhicb be 
deserves, it certainly was tlieir spirit wliich animated Father 
du Breul; when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sub- 
lime words, worthy of ail centuries : I am a Parisian by 
nation, and a Parrhisian in language, for ^arrhisia in Greek 
signifies liberty of speech ; of which I hâve made use even 
towards messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to 
Monsieur the Prince de Conty, always with respect to their 
greatness, and without ofiending any one of their suite, which 
is much to say.’^ 

There was then neither hatred for the cardinal, nor disdain 
for his presence, in the disagreeable impression produced 
upon Pierre Gringoire. Quite the* contrary; our poet had 
too much good sense and too threadbare a coat, not to 
attach particular importance to having the numerous allusions 
in his prologue, and, in particular, the glorification of the dau- 
phin, son of the Lion of France, fall upon the most eminent 
ear. But it is not interest which prédominâtes in the noble 
nature of poets. I suppose that the entity of the poet may 
be represented by the number ten ; it is certain that a chemist 
on analyzing and pharmacopolizing it, as Eabelais says, would 
find it composed of one part interest to nine parts of self- 
esteem. 

ISTow, at the moment when the door had opened to admit 
the cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, 
swollen and expanded by the breath of popular admiration, 
were in a State of prodigious augmentation, beneath which 
disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molécule of 
interest which we hâve just remarked upon in the constitu- 
tion of poets ; a precious ingrédient, by the way, a ballast of 
reality and humanity, Avithout which they Avould not touch 
the earth. Gringoire enjoyed seeing, feeling, fingering, so to 
speak, an entire assembly (of knaves, it is true, but what mat- 
ters that ?) stupefied, petrified, and as though asphyxiated in 
the presence of the incommensurable tirades which welled up 
every instant froin ail parts of his bridai song. I affirm that 
he shared the general béatitude, and that, quite the reverse of 


30 


NOTBE-BAME. 


La Fontaine, who, at the présentation of his comedy cf the 
^‘Florentine,’’ asked, “Wlio is the ill-bred lout who inade 
that rhapsody ? ” Gringoire would gladly hâve inquired of his 
neighbor, “ Whose masterpiece is this ? ” 

The reader can now judge of the effect produced upon him 
by the abrupt and unseasonable arrivai of the cardinal. 

That which he had to fear was only too fully realized. 
The entrance of his eminence upset the audience. Ail heads 
turned towards the gallery. It was no longer possible to 
hear one’s self. “ The cardinal ! The cardinal ! ” repeated 
ail moiiths. The unhappy prologue stopped short for the 
second time. 

The cardinal halted for a moment on the threshold of 
the estrade. While he was sending a rather indifferent 
glance around the audience, the tumult redoubled. Each 
person wished to get a better view of him. Each man vied 
with the other in thrusting his head over his neighbor’s 
shoulder. 

He was, in fact, an exalted personage, the sight of whom was 
well worth any other comedy. Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon, 
Archbishop and Comte of Lyon, Primate of the Gauls, was 
allied both to Louis XI., through his brother, Pierre, Seigneur 
de Beau] eu, who had married the king’s eldest daughter, and 
to Charles the Bold through his mother, Agnes of Burgundy. 
Now, the dominating trait, the peculiar and distinctive trait 
of the character of the Primate of the Gauls, was the spirit 
of the courtier, and dévotion to the powers that be. The 
reader can form an idea of the numberless embarrassments 
which this double relationship had caused him, and of ail 
the temporal reefs among which his spiritual bark had been 
forced to tack, in order not to suffer shipwreck on either 
Louis or Charles, that Scylla and that Charybdis which had 
devoured the Duc de Nemours and the Constable de Saint- 
Pol. Thanks to Heaven’s mercy, he had made the voyage 
successfully, and had reached home without hindrance. But 
although he was in port, and precisely because he was in 
port, he never recalled without disquiet the varied haps of 


MONSIEUR THE CAREINAL. 


31 


his political career, so long uneasy and laborions. Thus, he 
was in the babils of saying that the year 1476 had been 
“ white and black ” for him — meaning tbereby, that in the 
course of that year he had lost his mother, the Duchesse de 
la Bourbonnais, and his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, and 
that one grief had consoled hiin for the other. 

Nevertheless, he was a fine man ; he led a joyous cardinal’s 
life, liked to enliven himself with the royal vintage of Chal- 
luau, did not hâte Kicharde la G-armoise and Thomasse la 
Saillarde, bestowed alins on pretty girls rather than on old 
women, — and for ail these reasons was very agreeable to the 
'populace of Paris. He never went about otherwise than sur- 
rounded by a small court of bishops and abbés of high lineage, 
gallant, jovial, and given to carousing on occasion ; and more 
than once the good and devout women of Saint Germain 
d’ Auxerre, when passing at night beneath the brightly illumi- 
nated Windows of Bourbon, had been scandalized to hear the 
same voices which had intoned vespers for them during the 
day carolling, to the clinking of glasses, the bacchic proverb of 
Benedict XII., that pope who had added a third crown to the 
tiara — Bibamns papaliter. 

It was this justly acquired popularity, no doubt, which pre- 
served him on his entrance from any bad réception at the 
hands of the mob, which had been so displeased but a mo- 
ment before, and very little disposed to respect a cardinal on 
the very day when it was to elect a pope. But the Parisians 
cherish little rancor; and then, having forced the beginning 
of the play by their authority, the good bourgeois had-got the 
upper hand of the cardinal, and this triumph was sufficient 
for them. Moreover, the Cardinal de Bourbon was a hand- 
some man, — he wore a fine scarlet robe, which he carried ofî 
very well, — that is to say, he had ail the women on his side, 
and, consequently, the best half of the audience. Assuredly, 
it would be injustice and bad taste to hoot a cardinal for hav- 
ing corne late to the spectacle, when he is a handsome man, 
and when he wears his scarlet robe well. 

He entered, then, bowed to those présent with the heredi- 


32 


NOTRE-DAME. 


tary smile of the great for the people, and directed his course 
slowly towards his scarlet velvet arm-chair, with the air of 
thinking of something quite different. His cortege — what 
v/e should nowadays call his staff — of bishops and abbés 
invaded the estrade in his train, not without causing re- 
doubled tumult and curiosity among the audience. Each 
nian vied with his neighbor in pointing them out and naming 
them, in seeing who should recognize at least one of thern : 
this one, the Bishop of Marseilles (Alaudet, if my inemory 
serves me right) ; — this one, the primicier of Saint-Denis ; 
this one, Eobert de Lespinasse, Abbé of Saint-Germain des 
Prés, that libertine brother of a mistress of Louis XI. ; ail 
with many errors and absurdities. As for the scholars, they 
swore. This was their day, their feast of fools, their saturna- 
lia, the annual orgy of the corporation of law clerks and of 
the school. There was no turpitude which was not sacred on 
that day. And then there were gay gossips in the crowd — 
Simone Quatrelivres, Agnès la Gadine, and Eabine Piédebou. 
Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one’s ease 
and revile the naine of God a little, on so fine a day, in such 
good company as dignitaries of the church and loose women ? 
So they did not abstain ; and, in the midst of the uproar, there 
was a frightful concert of blasphemies and enormities of ail 
the unbridled tongues, the tongues of clerks and students 
restrained during the rest of the year, by the fear of the hot 
iron of Saint Louis. Poor Saint Louis ! how they set him at 
défiance in his own court of law ! Each one of them selected 
from the new-comers on the platform, a black, gray, white, 
or violet cassock as his target. Joannes Erollo de Molen- 
dino, in his quality of brother to an archdeacon, boldly 
attacked the scarlet; he sang in deafening tones, with his 
impudent eyes fastened on the cardinal, Cappa repleta 
mero ! ’’ 

AU these details which we here lay bare for the édification 
of the reader, were so covered by the general uproar, that 
they were lost in it before reaching the reserved platform ; 
moreover, they would hâve moved the cardinal but little, so 


MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL. 


33 


niuch a part of the customs were tlie liberties of tbat day. 
Moreover, he had another cause for solicitude, and his mien 
was wholly preoccupied with it, which entered the estrade 
at the same time as himself; this was the embassy froin 
Klanders. 

Not that he was a profound politician, nor was he borrowing 
trouble about the possible conséquences of the marriage of 
his cousin Marguerite de Bourgoyne to his cousin Charles, 
Dauphin de Vienne ; nor as to how long the good understand- 
ing which had been patched up between the Duke of Austria 
and the King of France would last ; nor how the King of 
England would take this disdain of his daughter. Ail that 
troubled him but little ; and he gave a warin réception every 
evening to the wine of the royal vintage of Chaillot, without 
a suspicion that several flasks of that same wine (somewhat 
revised and corrected, it is true, by Doctor Coictier), cordially 
offered to Edward IV. by Louis XI., would, sonie fine morn- 
ing, rid Louis XI. of Edward IV. The much honored em- 
bassy of Monsieur the Duke of Austria,’^ brought the cardinal 
none of these cares, but it troubled him in another direction. 
It was, in fact, somewhat hard, and we hâve already hinted 
at it on the second page of this book, — for him, Charles de 
Bourbon, to be obliged to feast and reçoive cordially no one 
knows what hoiirgeois ; — for him, a cardinal, to reçoive alder- 
men; — for him, a Erenchman, and a jolly companion, to 
reçoive Flemish beer-drinkers, — and that in public ! This 
was, certainly, one of the most irksome grimaces that he had 
ever executed for the good pleasure of the king. 

So he turned toward the door, and with the best grâce in 
the World (so well had he trained himself to it), when the 
usher announced, in a sonorous voice, ^‘Messieurs the Envoys 
of Monsieur the Duke of Austria.’^ It is useless to add that 
the whole hall did the same. 

Then arrived, two by two, with a gravity which made a 
contrast in the midst of the frisky ecclesiastical escort of 
Charles de Bourbon, the eight and forty ambassadors of Max- 
imilian of Austria, having at their head the reverend Father 


34 


NOTBE-DAME. 


in God, Jehan, Abbot of Saint-Bertin, Chancellor of the 
Golden Fleece, and Jacques de Goy, Sieur Dauby, Grand Bailiff 
of Ghent. A deep silence settled over the assembly, accom- 
panied by stifled laughter at the preposterous names and ail 
the bourgeois désignations which each of these personages 
transmitted with imperturbable gravity to the usher, who then 
tossed naines and titles pell-mell and mutilated to the crowd 
below. There were Master Loys Eoelof, alderman of the city 
of Louvain ; Messire Clays d’Etuelde, alderman of Brussels ; 
Messire Paul de Baeust, Sieur de Voirmizelle, President of 
Flanders ; Master Jehan Coleghens, burgomaster of the city 
of Antwerp ; Master George de la Moere, first alderman of the 
kuere of the city of Ghent ; Master Gheldolf van der Hage, 
first alderman of the parchons of the said town ; and the 
Sieur de Bierbecque, and Jehan Pinnock, and Jehan Dymaer- 
zelle, etc., etc., etc. ; bailiffs, aldermen, burgomasters ; burgo- 
masters, aldermen, bailiffs — ail stiff, affectedly grave, formai, 
dressed out in velvet and damask, hooded with caps of black 
velvet, with great tufts of Cyprus gold thread ; good Flemish 
heads, after ail, severe and worthy faces, of the family which 
Eembrandt makes to stand out so strong and grave from the 
black background of his “Night Patrol ; personages ail of 
■ whom bore, written on their brows, that Maximilian of Ans- 
tria had done well in “ trusting implicitly,’’ as the manifest 
ran, ‘Gn their sense, valor, expérience, loyalty, and good 
wisdom.’’ 

There was one exception, however. It was a subtle, intelli- 
gent, crafty-looking face, a sort of combined monkey and diplo- 
mat phiz, before whom the cardinal made three steps and a 
profound bow, and whose name, nevertheless, was only, 
“ Guillaume Eym, counsellor and pensioner of the City of 
Ghent.’’ 

Few persons were then aware who Guillaume Eym was. A 
rare genius who in a time of révolution would hâve made a 
brilliant appearance on the surface of events, but who in the 
fifteenth century was reduced to cavernous intrigues, and to 

living in mines,” as the Duc • de Saint-Simon expresses it. 


MONSIEUR THE CARDINAL, 


85 


Nevertheless, he was appreciated by the miner of Europe ; 
he plotted familiarly with Louis XI., and often lent a hand to 
the king’s secret jobs. Ail which things were quite unknown 
to that throng, who were amazed at the cardinal’s politeness 
to that frail figure of a Fleinish bailiff. 




CHAPTER IV. 

MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE. 

While the pensioner of Glient and liis eminence were 
exchanging very low bows and a few words in voices still 
lower, a man of lofty stature, with a large face and broad 
sboulders, presented himself, in order to enter abreast with 
Guillaume Eym ; one would bave pronounced hiin a bull-dog 
by tlie side of a fox. His felt doublet and leather jerkin 
inade a spot on the velvet and silk which surrounded him. 
Presuming that he was some groom who had stolen in, the 
usher stopped him. 

Hold, my friend, you cannot pass ! 

The man in the leather jerkin shouldered him aside. 

What does this knave want with me ? ” said he, in stento- 
rian tones, which rendered the entire hall attentive to this 
strange colloquy. Don’t you see that I am one of them ? ” 

Your naine ? ’’ demanded the usher. 

J acques Coppenole.’’ 

Your titles ? ” 

“Hosier at the sign of the 'Three Little Chains,' of 
Ghent.’’ 

The usher recoiled. One might bring one’s self to announce 
aldermen and bùrgomasters, but a hosier was too much. The 

30 


MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE. 


37 


cardinal was on thorns. Ail the people were staring and lis- 
tening. For two days liis eminence had been exerting his 
utmost efforts to lick these Flemisb bears into shape, and to 
render them a little more présentable to the public, and this 
freak was startling. But Guillaume Kym, witli his polished 
smile, approached the usher. 

Announce Master Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the alder- 
men of the city of Ghent,’’ he whispered, very low. 

‘‘Usher,” interposed the cardinal, aloud, “announce Master 
Jacques Coppenole, clerk of the aldermen of the illustrions 
city of Ghent.” 

This was a mistake. Guillaume Eym alone might hâve 
eonjured away the difïiculty, but Coppenole had heard the 
cardinal. 

“ No, cross of God ? ” he exclaimed, in his voice of thunder, 
“Jacques Coppenole, hosier. Do you hear, usher? Nothing 
more, nothing less. Cross of God ! hosier ; that’s fine enough. 
Monsieur the Archduke has more than once sought his gant * 
in my hose.” 

Laughter and applause burst forth. A jest is always under- 
stood in Paris, and, consequently, always applauded. 

Let us add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the 
audit ors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus 
the communication between him and them had been prompt, 
electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the 
Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in 
ail these plebeian soûls that latent sentiment of dignity still 
vague and indistinct in the fifteenth century. 

This hosier was an equal, who had just held his own before 
monsieur the cardinal. A very sweet reflection to poor fel- 
lows habituated to respect and obedience towards the under- 
lings of the sergeants of the bailifi of Sainte-Geneviève, the 
cardinaPs train-bearer. 

Coppenole proudly saluted his eminence, who returned the 
sainte of the all-powerful bourgeois feared by Louis XI. 
Then, while Guillaume Bym, a “ sage and malicious man,” as 
Philippe de Comines puts it, watched them both with a smile 
* Got the first idea of a thing. 


38 


NOTRE-DAME. 


of raillery and superiority, each sought his place, the cardinal 
quite abashed and troubled, Coppenole tranquil and liaughty, 
and tliinking, no doubt, that his title of liosier was as good as 
any other, after ail, and tliat Marie of Burgiindy, mother to 
that Marguerite whom Coppenole was to-day bestowing in 
marriage, would hâve been less afraid of the cardinal than of 
the hosier ; for it is not a cardinal who would hâve stirred up 
a revoit among the inen of Ghent against the favorites of the 
daughter of Charles the Bold ; it is not a cardinal who could 
hâve fortified the populace with a word against her tears and 
prayers, when the Maid of Flanders came to supplicate her 
people in their behalf, even at the very foot of the scaffold ; 
while the hosier had only to raise his leather elbow, in order 
to cause to fall your two heads, most illustrious seigneurs, 
Guy d’Hymbercourt and Chancelier Guillaume Hugonet. 

Nevertheless, ail was over for the poor cardinal, and he was 
obliged to quaff to the dregs the bitter cup of being in such 
bad company. 

ïhe reader has, probably, not forgotten the impudent beg. 
gar who had been clinging fast to the fringes of the cardinal’s 
gallery ever since the beginning of the prologue. The arrivai 
of the illustrious guests had by no means caused him to relax 
his hold, and, while the prelates and ambassadors were pack> 
ing themselves into the stalls — like genuine Flemish herrings 
— he settled himself at his ease, argd boldly crossed his legs 
on the architrave. The insolence of this proceeding was 
extraordinary, yet no one noticed it at first, the attention of 
ail being directed elsewhere. He, on his side, perceived noth- 
ing that was going on in the bail ; he wag’ged his head with 
the unconcern of a Neapolitan, repeating from time to tinie, 
amid the clamor, as from a mechanical habit, ^‘Charity, 
please ! And, assuredly, he was, out of ail those présent, 
the only one who had not deigned to turn his head at the 
altercation between Coppenole and the usher. How, chance 
ordained that the master hosier of Ghent, with whom the 
people were already in lively sympathy, and upon whom ail 
eyes were riveted — should corne and seat himself in the front 
row of the gallery, directly above the mendicant ; and people 


MASTIJR JACQUES COPFENOLE. 


39 


were not a little ainazed to see tlie Flemisli ambassador, on 
coiicluding his inspection of tlie knave tlius placed beneath 
bis eyes, bestow a friendly tap on tliat ragged shoulder. The 
beggar tiirned round ; tliere was surprise, récognition, a light- 
ing up of the two countenances, and so fortli; then, withont 
paying the slightest heed in the woiid to the spectators, the 
hosier and the wretched being began to converse in a low 
tone, holding each other’s hands, in the meantime, while the 
rags of Clopin Trouillefou, spread ont upon the cloth of gold 
of the dais, produced the effect of a Caterpillar on an orange. 

The novelty of this singular scene excited snch a inurmur 
of mirth and gayety in the hall, that the cardinal was not 
slow to perceive it ; he half bent forward, and, as froin the 
point where he was placed he could catch only an iinperfect 
view of Trouillerfou’s ignominioiis doublet, he very naturally 
imagined that the mendicant was asking alms, and, disgusted 
with his audacity, he exclaimed : “ Bailiff of the Courts, toss 
me that knave into the river ! ” 

“Cross of God ! monseigneur the cardinal,” said Coppenole, 
withont quitting Clopiii’s nand, “ he’s a friend of mine.” 

“ Good ! good ! ” shouted the populace. From that moment, 
IVlaster Coppenole enjoyed in Paris as in Ghent, “great favor 
with the peopie ; for men of that sort do enjoy it,” says 
Philippe de Comines, “ when they are thus disordeiiy.” 

The cardinal bit his lips. He bent towards his neighbor, 
the Abbé of Saint Geneviève, and said to him in a low tone, — 
“Fine ambassadors monsieur the archduke sends here, to 
announce to us Madame Marguerite ! ” 

“Your eminence,” replied the abbé, “wastes your polite- 
ness on these Fleniish swine. Marr/aritas ante porcos, pearls 
before swine.” 

“ Say rather,” retorted the cardinal, with a smile, “ Forces 
ante 3Ia.rgaritam, swine before the pearl.” 

The whole little court in cassocks went into ecstacies over 
this play upon words. The cardinal felt a little relieved ; he 
was quits with Coppenole, he also had had his jest applauded. 

Now, will those of our readers who possess the power of 
generalizing an image or an idea, as the expression runs in 


40 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the style of to-day, permit us to ask them if they hâve formed 
a very clear conception of the spectacle presented at this 
moment, upon which we hâve arrested their attention, by the 
vast parallelogram of the grand hall of the palace. 

In the middle of the hall, backed against the western wall, 
a large and magnificent gallery draped with cloth of gold, into 
which enter in procession, through a small, arched door, grave 
personages, announced successively by the shrill voice of an 
usher. On the front benches were alread}’' a number of vén- 
érable figures, muffled in ermine, velvet, and scarlet. Around 
the dais — which remains silent and dignified — below, oppo- 
site, everywhere, a great crowd and a great murmur. Thou- 
sands of glances directed by the people on each face upon the 
dais, a thousand whispers over each naine. Certainly, the 
spectacle is curions, and well deserves the attention of the 
spectators. But yonder, quite at the end, what is that sort 
of trestle work with four motley puppets upon it, and more 
below ? Who is that man beside the trestle, with a black 
doublet and a. pale face ? Alas ! my dear reader, it is Pierre 
Gringoire and his prologue. 

We hâve ail forgotten him completely. 

This is precisely what he feared. 

From the moment of the cardinal’s entran ce, Gringoire had 
never ceased to tremble for the safety of his prologue. At 
first he had enjoined the actors, who had stopped in suspense, 
to continue, and to raise their voices ; then, perceiving that 
no one was listening, he had stopped them ; and, during the 
entire quarter of an hour that the interruption lasted, he had 
not ceased to stamp, to flounce about, to appeal to Gisquette 
and Liénarde, and to urge his neighbors to the continuance, 
of the prologue ; ail in vain. No one quitte d the cardinal, 
the embassy, and the gallery — sole centre of this vast circle 
of Visual ray s. We must also belle ve, and we say it with 
regret, that the prologue had begun slightly to weary the 
audience at the moment when his eminence had arrived, 
and created a diversion in so terrible a fashion. After ail, 
on the gallery as well as on the marble table, the spectacle 
was the same : the conflict of Labor and Clergy, of Nobility 


MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE. 


41 


and Merchandise. And inany people preferred to see them 
alive, breathing, nioving, elbowing each other in flesh and 
blood, in this Flemisli embassy, in this Episcopal court, 
under tbe cardinal s robe, under Coppenole’s jerkin, than 
painted, decked out, talking in verse, and, so to speak, stuffed 
beneatli the yellow and white tunics in which Gringoire had 
so ridiculously clothed them. 

Nevertheless, wlien our poet beheld quiet reëstablished 
to some extent, he devised a stratagem which might hâve 
redeemed ail. 

Monsieur,’’ he said, turning towards one of his neighbors, 
a fine, big man, with a patient face, suppose we begin 
again.” 

What ? ” said his neighbor. 

Hé ! the Mystery,” said Gringoire. 

As you like,” returned his neighbor. 

This semi-approbation sufiiced for Gringoire, and, conduct- 
ing his own affairs, he began to shout, confounding himself 
with the crowd as much as possible : ^ Begin the mystery 
again ! begin again ! ” 

‘‘ The de vil ! ” said Joannes de Molendino, what are they 
jabbering down yonder, at the end of the hall ? ” (for Grin- 
goire was making noise enough for four.) “ Say, comrades, 
isn’t that mystery finished ? They want to begin it ail over 
again. That’s not fair ! ” 

^^No, no!” shouted ail the scholars. ^^Down with the 
mystery ! Down with it ! ” 

But Gringoire had multiplied himself, and only shouted 
the more vigorously : ‘‘ Begin again ! begin again ! ” 

These clamors attracted the attention of the cardinal. 

‘‘ Monsieur Bailiff of the Courts,” said he to a tall, black 
man, placed a few paces from him, are those knaves in a 
holy-water vessel, that they make such a hellish noise ? ” 

The bailiff of the courts was a sort of amphibious magis- 
trate, a sort of bat of the judicial order, related to both the 
rat and the bird, the judge and the soldier. 

He approached his eminence, and not without a good deal 
of fear of the latter’s displeasure, he awkwardly explained to 


42 


NOTRE-DAME. 


liiin the seeming disrespect of the audience : that noonday 
had arrived before bis eminence, and that the comedians had 
been forced to begin withoiit waiting for his eminence. 

The cardinal burst into a laugh. 

“ On iny faith, the rector of the university ought to hâve 
done the same. What say you, Master Guillaume Rym ? 

Monseigneur/’ replied Guillaume Kym, let us be content 
with having escaped half of the comedy. There is at least 
that much gained.” 

“ Can these rascals continue their farce ? ” asked the bailiff. 

‘‘ Continue, continue said the cardinal, it’s ail the same 
to me. l’il read my breviary in the meantime.” 

The bailiff advanced to the edge of the estrade, and cried, 
after having invoked silence by a wave of the hand, — 

Bourgeois, rustics, and citizens, in order to satisfy those 
who wish the play to begin again, and those who wish it 
to end, his eminence orders that it be continued.” 

Both parties were forced to resign themselves. But the 
public and the author long cherished a grudge against the 
cardinal. 

So the personages on the stage took up their parts, and 
Gringoire hoped that the rest of his work, at least, would be 
listened to. This hope was speedily dispelled like his other 
illusions ; silence had indeed, been restored in the audience, 
after a fashion ; but Gringoire had not observed that at the 
moment when the cardinal gave the order to continue, the 
gallery was far from full, and that after the Flemish envoys 
there had arrived new personages forming part of the cortège, 
whose naines and ranks, shouted out in the midst of his dia- 
logue by the intermittent cry of the usher, produced consid- 
érable ravages in it. Let the reader imagine the elîect in the 
midst of a theatrical piece, of the yelping of an usher, flinging 
in between two rhymes, and often in the middle of a line, 
parenthèses like the following, — 

Master J acques Charmolue, procurator to the king in the 
Ecclesiastical Courts ! ” 

J ehan de Harlay, equerry guardian of the office of chev- 
alier of the night watch of the city of Paris ! 


MASTER JACQUES COPPENOLE. 43 

Messire Galiot de Genoilhac, chevalier, seigneur de Brus- 
sac, master of the king’s artillery ! ’’ 

Master Dreux-Baguier, surveyor of the woods and forests 
of the king our sovereign, in the land of France, Champagne 
and Brie ! ” 

^‘Messire Louis de Graville, chevalier, councillor, and 
Chamberlain of the king, admirai of France, keeper of the 
forest of Vincennes ! ” 

“Master Denis le Mercier, guardian of the house of the 
blind at Paris ! ” etc., etc., etc. 

This was becoming unbearable. 

This strange accompaniment, which rendered it difficult to 
follow the piece, made Gringoire ail the more indignant bé- 
cause he could not conceal from himself the fact that the 
interest was continually increasing, and that ail his work re- 
quired was a chance of being heard. 

It was, in fact, difficult to imagine a more ingénions and 
more dramatic composition. The four personages of the 
prologue were bewailing themselves in their mortal embarrass- 
ment, when Venus in person, (vera incessa 'patuit dea) pre- 
sented herself to them, clad in a fine robe bearing the heraldic 
device of the ship of the city of Paris. She had corne herself 
to daim the dolphin promised to the most beautiful. J upiter, 
whose thunder could be heard rumbling in the dressing-room, 
supported her daim, and Venus was on the point of carrying 
it off, — that is to say, without allegory, of marrying monsieur 
the dauphin, when a young child clad in white daniask, and 
holding in her hand a daisy (a transparent personification of 
Mademoiselle Marguerite of Flanders) came to contest it with 
Venus. 

Theatrical effect and change. 

After a dispute. Venus, Marguerite, and the assistants 
agreed to submit to the good judgment of the holy Virgin. 
There was another good part, that of the king of Mesopota- 
mia ; but through so many interruptions, it was difficult to 
make out what end he served. Ail these persons had ascended 
by the ladder to the stage. 

But ail was over ; none of these beauties had been felt nor 


44 


NOTRE-DAME. 


understood. On tlie entrance of the cardinal, One would hâve 
said that an invisible magic thread had suddenly drawn ail 
glances from tlie marble table to the gallery, from the Southern 
to the western extreinity of the hall. Nothing could disen- 
chant the audience ; ail eyes remained fixed there, and the 
new-comers and their accursed naines, and their faces, and their 
costumes, afforded a continuai diversion. This was very dis- 
tressing. With the exception of Gisquette and Liénarde, who 
turned round from time to time when Gringoire plucked them 
by the sleeve ; with the exception of the big, patient neighbor, 
no one listened, no one looked at the poor, deserted moral ity 
full face. Gringoire saw only profiles. 

. With what bitterness did he behold his whole érection of 
glory and of poetry crumble away bit by bit ! And to think 
that these people had been upon the point of instituting a 
revoit against the bailiff through impatience to hear his work ! 
now that they had it they did not care for it. This saine rep- 
résentation which had been begun amid so unanimous an 
acclamation ! Eternal flood and ebb of popular favor ! To 
think that they had been on the point of hanging the bailiff’s 
sergeant ! What would he not hâve given to be still at that 
hour of honey ! 

But the usher’s brutal monologue came to an end ; every 
one had arrived, and Gringoire breathed freely once more ; 
the actors continued bravely. But Master Coppenole, the 
hosier, must needs rise of a sudden, and Gringoire was forced 
to listen to him deliver, amid universal attention, the follow- 
ing abominable harangue. 

Messieurs the bourgeois and squires of Paris, I don’t 
know, cross of God ! what we are doing here. I certainly do 
see yonder in the corner on that stage, some people who ap- 
pear to be fighting. I don’t know whether that is what you 
call a mystery,” but it is not amusing ; they quarrel with their 
tongues and nothing more. I hâve been waiting for the first 
blow this quarter of an hour ; nothing cornes ; they are cow- 
ards who only scratch each other with insults. You ought to 
send for the fighters of London or Eotterdam ; and, I can tell 
you ! you would hâve had blows of the fist that could be 


MASTER JACQUES COPPEJSfOLE. 


45 


iieard in tlie Place ; but tbese men excite our pity. They 
ouglit at least, to give us a nioorisli dance, or sonie otlier muin- 
niery ! That is not what was told me ; I was promised a feast 
of fools, witli the élection of a pope. We liave our pope of 
fools at Gbent also ; we’re not beliindliand in tliat, cross of 
God ! But this is tlie way we manage it ; we collect a crowd 
like this one here, then each person in turn passes his head 
througli a hole, and makes a grimace at the rest ; the one who 
makes the ugliest, is elected pope by general acclamation ; 
that’s the way it is. It is very diverting. Would y ou like to 
make your pope after the fashion of my country ? At ail 
events, it will be less wearisome than to listen to chatterers. 
If they wish to corne and make their grimaces through the 
hole, they can join the game. What say y ou. Messieurs les 
bourgeois ? You hâve here enough grotesque specimens of 
both sexes, to allow of laughing in Flemish fashion, and there 
are enough of us ugly in countenance to hope for a fine grin- 
ning match.” 

Gringoire would hâve liked to retort ; stupéfaction, rage, 
indignation, deprived him of words. Moreover, the sug- 
gestion of the popular hosier was receiyed with such enthusi- 
asm by these bourgeois who were flattered at being called 
squires,” that ail résistance was useless. There was nothing 
to be done but to allow one’s self to drift with the torrent. 
Gringoire hid his face between his two hands, not being so 
fortunate as to hâve a mantle with which to veil his head, 
like Agamemnon of Timantis. 




CHAPTEE, V. 

QUASIMODO. 

In tlie twiiikling of an eye, ail was ready to execiite Cop- 
penole’s idea. Bourgeoisy scholars and law clerks ail set to 
Work. Tlie little chapel situated opposite the marble table 
was selected for tbe scene of tlie grinning match. A pane 
broken in the pretty rose window above the door, left free a 
circle of stone through which it was agreed that the coinpeti- 
tors should thrust their heads. In order to reach it, it was 
only necessary to inount upon a couple of hogsheads, which 
had been produced from I know not where, and perched one 
upon the other, after a fashion. It was settled that each can- 
didate, man or woman (for it was possible to choose a feinale 
pope), should, for the sake of leaving the impression of his 
grimace fresh and complété, cover his face and reniain con- 
cealed in the chapel until the moment of his appearance. In 
less than an instant, the chapel was crowded with competitors, 
upon whom the door was then closed. 

Coppenole, from his post, ordered ail, directed ail, arranged 
ail. Euring the uproar, the cardinal, no less abashed than 
Gringoire, had retired with ail his suite, under the pretext of 
business and vespers, without the crowd which his arrivai had 
so deeply stirred being in the least moved by his departure. 
Guillaume Eym was the only one who noticed his eminence’s 
discomfiture. The attention of the populace, like the sun, 
pursued its révolution ; having set ont from one end of the 
hall, and halted for a space in the middle, it had now reached 

46 


qUASIMOBO. 


47 


tlie other end. The marble table, tbe brocaded gallery bad eacb 
bad their day ; it was now tbe turn of tbe ehapel of Louis XI. ' 
Henceforth, tbe field was open to all folly. There was no one 
tbere now, but tbe Flemings and tbe rabble. 

Tbe grimaces began. The first face wbich appeared at tbe 
aperture, witb eyelids turned up to tbe reds, a mouth open 
like a maw, and a brow wrinkled like our bussar boots of tbe 
Empire, evoked such an inextinguishable peal of laughter 
that Homer would bave taken all tbese louts for gods. Xever- 
theless, tbe grand hall was anything but Olympus, and Grin- 
goire’s poor Jupiter knew it better than any one else. A 
second and tbird grimace followed, tben anotber and anotber ; 
and tbe laughter and transports of deligbt went on increasing. 
Tbere was in this spectacle, a peculiar power of intoxication 
and fascination, of wbich it would be difficult to convey to tbe 
reader of our day and our salons any idea. 

Let tbe reader picture to himself a sériés of visages pre- 
senting successively all geometrical forms, from tbe triangle 
to tbe trapezium, from tbe cône to tbe polybedron ; all buman 
expressions, from wrath to lewdness ; all âges, from tbe 
wrinkles of tbe new-born babe to tbe wrinkles of tbe aged 
and dying; all religions pbantasmagories, from Eaun to Beel- 
zebub; all animal profiles, from tbe maw to tbe beak, from 
tbe jowl to tbe muzzle. Let tbe reader imagine all tbese 
grotesque figures of tbe Pont Neuf, tbose nigbtmares petrified 
beneatb tbe hand of Germain Pilon, assuming life and breath, 
and Corning in turn to stare you in tbe face witb burning 
eyes ; all tbe masks of tbe Carnival of Venice passing in suc- 
cession before your glass, — in a word, a buman kaléidoscope. ^ 

The orgy grew more and more Flemish. Teiiiers could bave 
given but a very imperfect idea of it. Let tbe reader picture 
to himself in baccbanal form, Salvator KoSa’s battle. There 
were no longer either scholars or ambassadors or bourgeois or 
men or women ; there was no longer any Clopin Trouillefou, 
nor Gilles Lecornu, nor Marie Quatrelivres, nor Eobin Pousse- 
pain. All was universal license. The grand bail was no 
longer anything but a vast furnace of effrontry and joviality, 
wbere every mouth was a cry, every individual a posture j 


48 


NOTRE-DAME. 


everything shouted and howle^ The strange visages which 
came, in turn, to gnash their^eth in the rosewindow, were 
like so inany brands cast into the brazier ; and from the whole 
of this efîervescing crowd, there escaped, as from a furnace, 
a Sharp, piercing, stinging noise, hissing like the wings of a 
gnat. 

‘‘ Ho hé ! curse it î ’’ 

Just look at that face ! ’’ 

It’s not good for anything/’ 

“ Guilleinette Maugerepuis, just look at that bulTs mnzzle- 
it only lacks the horns. It can’t be your husband.’^ 

Another ! 

Belly of the pope ! what sort of a grimace is that ? ’’ 

Holà hé ! that’s cheating, One must show only one’â 
face/’ 

That damned Perrette Callebotte ! she’s capable of that ! ” 

^^Good! Good!” 

“ l’m stifling ! ” 

There’s a fellow whose ears won’t go through ! ” Etc., etc. 

But we must do justice to our friend Jehan. In the midst 
of this witches’ sabbath, he was still to be seen on the top of 
his pillar, like the cabin-boy on the topmast. He floundered 
about with incredible fury. His mouth was wide open, and 
from it there escaped a cry which no one heard, not that it 
was covered by the general clamor, great as that was, but 
because it attained, no doubt, the limit of perceptible sharp 
sounds, the thousand vibrations of Sauveur, or the eight 
thousand of Bi^ 

As for Gringoire, the first moment of dépréssion having 
passed, he had regained his composure. He had hardened 
himself against adversity. — “ Continue ! ” he had said for the 
third time, to his comedians, speaking machines ; then as he 
was marching with great strides in front of the marble table, 
a fancy seized him to go and appear in his turn at the aperture 
of the chapel, were it only for the pleasure of making a 
grimace at that ungrateful populace. — But no, that would 
not be worthy of us ; no, vengeance ! let us combat until the 
end,” he repeated to himself j ^Hhe power of poetry over 


quAsiMOBO. 49 

people is great ; I will bring them back. We sliall see which 
will cariy tbe day, grimaces or polite literature.’’ 

Alas ! he had beeii left the sole spectator of his piece. 

It was far worse than it had been a little while before. He 
no longer beheld anything but backs. 

I ain mistaken. The big, patient man, whom he had already 
consulted in a critical moment, had remained with his face 
turned towards the stage. As for Gisquette and Liénarde, 
they had deserted him long ago. 

Gringoire was touched to the heart by the fidelity of his 
only spectator. He approached him and addressed him, shak- 
ing his arm slightly; for the good man was leaning on the 
balustrade and dozing a little. 

Monsieur/^ said Gringoire, I thank you ! 

Monsieur,’’ replied the big man with a yawn, for what ? ” 

“ I see what wearies you,” resumed the poet ; “ ’tis ail this 
noise which prevents your hearing comfortably. But be at 
ease ! your name shall descend to posterity ! Your name, 
if you please ? ” 

‘‘ Kenauld Chateau, guardian of the seals of the Châtelet of 
Paris, at your service.” 

“Monsieur, you are the only representive of the muses 
here,” said Gringoire. 

“You are too kind, sir,” said the guardian of the seals at the 
Châtelet. 

“You are the only one,” resumed Gringoire, “who has lis- 
tened to the piece decorously. What do you think of it ? ” 

“ He ! he ! ” replied the fat magistrate, half aroused, “ it’s 
tolerably jolly, that’s a fact.” 

Gringoire was forced to content himself with this eulogy ; 
for a thunder of applause, mingled with a prodigious acclama- 
tion, eut their conversation short. The Pope of the Pools had 
been elected. 

“Noël ! Noël ! Noël ! ” * shouted the people on ail sides. 

That was, in fact, a marvellous grimace which was beaming 
at that moment through the aperture in the rose window. 
After ail the pentagonal, hexagonal, and whimsical faces, which 
* The ancient French hurrah. 


50 


NOTEE-BAME. 


liad succeeded each other at that hole without realizing the 
idéal of the grotesque which tlieir imaginations, excited by 
the orgy, had constructed, nothing less was needed to win their 
suffrages than the sublime grimace whch had just dazzled the 
assembly. Master Coppenole himself applauded, and Clopin 
Trouillefou, who had been among the competitors (and God 
knows what intensity of ugliness his visage could attain), 
confessed himself conquered. We will do the saine. We 
shall not try to give the reader an idea of tliat tetrahedral 
nose, that horseshoe mouth; that little left eye obstructed 
with a red, bushy, bristling eyebrow, while the right eye dis- 
appeared entirely beneath an enormous wart ; of those teeth 
in disarray, broken here and there, like the embattled parapet 
of a fortress ; of that calions lip, upon which one of these 
teeth encroached, like the tusk of an éléphant ; of that forked 
chin ; and above ail, of the expression spread over the whole ; 
of that mixture of malice, amazement, and sadness. Let the 
reader dream of this whole, if he can. 

The acclamation was unanimous ; people rushed towards 
the chapel. They made the lucky Pope of the Pools corne 
forth in triumph. But it was then that surprise and admira- 
tion attained their highest pitch ; the grimace was his face. 

Or rather, his whole person was a grimace. A huge head, 
bristling with red hair ; between his shoulders an enormous 
hump, a counterpart perceptible in front ; a System of thighs 
and legs so strangely astray that they could touch each other 
only at the knees, and, viewed from the front, resembled the 
crescents of two scythes joined by the handles ; large feet, mon- 
strous hands ; and, with ail this deformity, an indescribable 
and redoubtable air of vigor, agility, and courage, — strange 
exception to the eternal rule which wills that force as well as 
beauty shall be the resuit of harmony. Such was the pope 
whom the fools had just chosen for themselves. 

One would hâve pronounced him a giant who had been 
broken and badly put together again. 

When this species of cyclops appeared on the threshold of 
the chapel, motionless, squat, and almost as broad as he was 
tall ; squared on the hase^ as a great man says ; with his doublet 


QUASmOBO. 


51 


half red, half violet, sown with silver bells, and, above ail, 
in the perfection of his ugliness, the populace recognized him 
on the instant, and shouted with one voice, — 

’Tis Quasiinodo, the bellringer ! ’tis Quasimodo, the hunch- 
back of Notre Dame ! Quasimodo, the one-eyed ! Quasimodo, 
the bandy-legged ! Noël ! Noël ! 

It will be seen that the poor fellow had a choice of surnames. 

Let the women with child beware ! ’’ shouted the scholars. 

^^Or those who wish to be,’’ resumed Joannes. 

The women did, in fact, hide their faces. 

Oh ! the horrible monkey ! ” said one of them. 

As wicked as he is ugly,” retorted another. 

“ He’s the devil,” added a third. 

I hâve the misfortune to live near Notre Dame ; I hear 
him prowling round the eaves by night.” 

With the cats.” 

“ He’s always on our roofs.” 

“ He throws spells down our chimneys.” 

The other evening, he came and made a grimace at me 
through my attic window. I thought that it was a man. 
Such a fright as I had ! ” 

l’ni sure that he goes to the witches’ sabbath. Once he 
left a broom on my leads.” 

Oh ! what a displeasing hunchback’s face ! ” 

Oh ! what an ill-favored soûl ! ” 

Whew ! ” 

The men, on the contrary, were delighted and applauded. 

Quasimodo, the object of the tumult, still stood on the 
threshold of the chapel, sombre and grave, and allowed them 
to admire him. 

One scholar (Kobin Poussepain, I think), came and laughed 
in his face, and too close. Quasimodo contented himself with 
taking him by the girdle, and hurling'him ten paces off amid 
the crowd ; ail without uttering a word. 

Master Coppenole, in amazement, approached him. 

Cross of God ! Holy Pather ! you possess the handsom- 
est ugliness that I hâve ever beheld in my life. You would 
deserve to be pope at Eome, as well as at Paris.” 


52 


J^0TBi:-DA3fK 


So saying, he placed his hand gayly on his shoulder. Qua- 
simodo did not stir. Coppenole went on, — 

Yon are a rogne with whoin I hâve a fancy for carousing, 
were it to cost me a new dozen of twelve livres of Tours. 
How does it strike you ? ’’ 

Quasimodo made no reply. 

‘‘ Cross of God ! ” said the hosier, are you deaf ? 

He was, in truth, deaf. 

Nevertheless, he began to grow impatient with Coppenole’s 
behavior, and suddenly turned towards him with so formid- 
able a gnashing of teeth, that the Flemish giant recoiled, like 
a bull-dog before a cat. 

Then there was created around that strange personage, a 
circle of terror and respect, whose radius was at least fifteen 
geometrical feet. An old woman explained to Coppenole that 
Quasimodo was deaf. 

Deaf ! ’’ said the hosier, with his great Flemish laugh. 

Cross of God ! He’s a perfect pope ! ” 

“ Hé ! I recognize him,” exclaimed Jehan, who had, at 
last, descended from his capital, in order to see Quasimodo at 
doser quarters, he’s the bellringer of my brother, the arch- 
deacon. Good-day, Quasimodo ! ” 

“ What a devil of a man ! ” said Eobin Poussepain still ail 
bruised with his fall. He shows himself ; he’s a hunchback. 
He walks ; he’s bandy-legged. He looks at you ; he’s one- 
eyed. You speak to him; he’s deaf. And what does this 
Polyphemus do with his tongue ? ” 

He speaks when he chooses,” said the old woman ; he be- 
came deaf through ringing the bells. He is not dumb.” 

^^That he lacks,” remarks Jehan. 

And he has one eye too many,” added Eobin Poussepain. 

^^Not at ail,” said Jehan wisely. ^^A one-eyed man is far 
less complété than a blind man. He knows what he lacks.” 

In the meantime, ail the beggars, ail the lackeys, ail the cut- 
purses, joined with the scholars, had gone in procession to 
seek, in the cupboard of the law clerks’ company, the cardboard 
tiara, and the derisive robe of the Pope of the Pools. Qua^ 
simodo allowed them to array him in them without wincing, 


qXTASIMOTtO. 


53 


and with a sort of proud docility. Then they made him seat 
himself on a motley litter. Twelve officers of the fraternity 
of fools raised him on their shoulders ; and a sort of bitter 
and disdainful joy lighted up the morose face of the cyclops, 
when he beheld beneath his deformed feet ail those heads of 
handsome, straight, well-made men. Then the ragged and 
howling procession set ont on its march, according to custom, 
around the inner galleries of the Courts, before making the 
circuit of the streets and squares. 



1 



CHAPTER VI. 

ESMERALDA. 

We are delighted to be able to inform the reader, that dur- 
ing the whole of this scene, Gringoire and his piece had stood 
firm. His actors, spurred on by him, had not ceased to spont 
his coinedy, and he had not ceased to listen to it. He had 
made up his mind about the tumult, and was determined to 
proceed to the end, not giving up the hope of a return of 
attention on the part of the public. This gleam of hope ac 
quired fresh life, when he saw Quasiinodo, Coppenole, and th^ 
deafening escort of the pope of the procession of fools quit 
the hall amid great uproar. The throng rushed eagerly after 
thein. ‘‘ Good,’’ he said to himself, ^Hhere go ail the mischief- 
inakers.” Unfortunately, ail the mischief-makers constituted. 
the entire audience. In the twinkling of an eye, the grand 
hall was empty. 

To tell the truth, a few spectators still remained, some scat- 
tered, others in groups around the pillars, women, old inen, or 
children, who had had enough of the uproar and tumult. Some 
scholars were still perched astride of the window-sills, en- 
gaged in gazing into the Place. 

^‘Well,’^ thought Gringoire, ^‘here are still as manÿ as are 
required to hear the end of iny mystery. They are few in 
number, but it is a choice audience, a lettered audience.’’ 

An instant later, a symphony which had been intended to 
produce the greatest effect on the arrivai of the Virgin, was 

54 


ESMERALBA. 


55 


lacking. Gringoire perceived that his music had been carried 
off by the procession of the Pope of the Pools. Skip it/’ said 
he, stoically. 

He approached a group of bourgeois, who seemed to him to 
be discussiiig bis piece. , Tbis is tbe fragment of conversation 
wbicb be caugbt, — 

“ You know, Master Cbeneteau, tbe Hôtel de Havarre, wbicb 
belonged to Monsieur de Nemours 

“Yes, opposite tbe Cbapelle de Braque.’^ 

Well, tbe treasury bas just let it to Guillaume Alixandre, 
bistorian, for six livres, eigbt sols, parisian, a year.’^ 

How rents are going up ! 

Corne,’’ said Gringoire to bimself, witb a sigb, tbe otbers 
are listening.” 

‘‘Comrades,” suddenly sbouted one of tbe young scamps 
from tbe window, “La Esmeralda! La Esmeralda in tbe 
Place!” 

Tbis Word produced a magical effect. Every one wbo was 
left in tbe bail flew to tbe Windows, climbing tbe walls in 
order to see, and repeating, “ La Esmeralda ! La Esmeralda ? ” 
At tbe saine time, a great Sound of applause was beard from 
witbout. 

“Wbat’s tbe meaning of tbis, of tbe Esmeralda?” said 
Gringoire, wringing bis bands in despair. “ Ab, good beavens ! 
it seems to be tbe turn of tbe Windows now.” 

He returned towards tbe marble table, and saw tbat tbe 
représentation bad been interrupted. It was precisely at 
tbe instant wben Jupiter sbould bave appeared witb bis 
tbunder. But Jupiter was standing motionless at tbe foot of 
tbe stage. 

“ Micbel Giborne ! ” cried tbe irritated poet, wbat are you 
doing tbere ? Is tbat your part ? Corne up ! ” 

“Alas!” said Jupiter, “a scbolai; bas iust seized tbe 
ladder.” 

Gringoire looked. It was but too true. Ail communication 
between his plot and its solution was intercepted. 

“ The rascal,” be murmured. “ And wby did be take tbat 
ladder ? ” 


56 


NOTRE-DAME, 


order to go and see the Esmeralda/^ replied Jupiter 
piteously. He said, ^ Corne, here’s a ladder that’s of no 
use ! ’ and he took it.’’ 

ïhis was the last blow. Gringoire received it with résig- 
nation. 

May the de vil fly away with you ! ” he said to the come- 
dians, and if I get my pay, you shall reçoive yours.’^ 

Then he beat a retreat, with drooping head, but the last 
in the field, like a general who lias fought well. 

And as he descended the winding stairs of the courts : A 
fine rabble of asses and doits these Parisians ! he muttered 
between his teeth; ^Hhey corne to hear a mystery and don’t 
listen to it at ail ! They are engrossed by every one, by 
Clopin Trouillefou, by the cardinal, by Coppenole, by Quasi- 
niodo, by the de vil ! but by Madame the Virgin Mary, not at 
ail. If I had known, l’d hâve given you Virgin Mary, you 
ninnies ! And I ! to corne to see faces and behold only backs ! 
to be a poet, and to reap the success of an apothecary ! It is 
true that Homerus begged through the Greek towns, and that 
Naso died in exile among the Muscovites. But may the devil 
flay me if I understand what they mean with their Esmeralda ! 
What is that word, in the first place ? — ^tis Egyptian ! 




BOOK SECOND. 


CHAPTER I. 

FROM CHARYBDIS TO SCYLLA. 

Night cornes on early in Jannary. The streets were already 
dark when Gringoire issued forth from the Courts. This 
gloom pleased him ; he was in haste to reach some obscure 
and deserted alley, in order there to meditate at his ease, and 
in order that the philosopher inight place the first dressing 
upon the wound of the poet. Philosophy, inoreover, was his 
sole refuge, for he did not know where he was to lodge for the 
night. After the brilliant failure of his first theatrical ven- 
fcure, he dared not return to the lodging which he occupied in 
the Pue Grenier-sur-k Eau, opposite to the Port-au-Eoin, hav- 
ing depended upon receiving from monsieur the provost for 
his epithalamium, the wherewithal to pay Master Guillaume 
Doulx-Sire, fariner of the taxes on cloven-footed animais in 
Paris, the rent which he owed him, that is to say, twelve sols 
parisian ; twelve times the value of ail that he possessed in 
the World, including his trunk-hose, > his shirt, and his cap. 
After refiecting a moment, temporarily sheltered beneath the 
little wicket of the prison of the treasurer of the Sainte- 
Chappelle, as to the shelter which he would select for the 
night, haying ail the pavements of Paris to choose from, he 
remembered to hâve noticed the week previously in the Eue 

57 


58 


NOTRE-DAME. 


de la Savaterie, at Llie door of a couiicillor of the parliameiifc, 
a steppiiig stoiie for niouiiliiig* a mule, and to hâve saH to 
liimself that thafc stoue would furnish, on occasion, a very 
excellent pillow for a inendicant or a poet. He thanked 
Providence for having sent this happy idea to him ; but, as lie 
was preparing to cross the Place, in order to reacli tlie tortu- 
ous labyrinth of the city, where meander ail those old sister 
streets, the Eues de la Barillerie, de la Vielle-Draperie, de la 
Savaterie, de la Juiverie, etc., still extant to-day, with their 
nine-story houses, he saw the procession of the Pope of the 
Pools, which was also emerging from the court house, and 
rushing across the courtyard, with great cries, a great flashing 
of torches, and the music which belonged to him, Gringoire. 
This sight revived the pain of his self-love; he fled. In the 
bitterness of his dramatic misadventure, everything which 
reminded him of the festival of that day irritated his wound 
and made it bleed. 

He was on the point of turning to the Pont Saint-Michel ; 
children were running about here and there with fire lances 
and rockets. 

Pest on firework candies ! ’’ said Gringoire ; and he fell 
back on the Port au Change. To the house at the head of the 
bridge there had been affixed three small banners, represent- 
ing the king, the dauphin, and Marguerite of Plandeis, and 
six little pennons on which were portrayed the Duke of Aus- 
tria, the Cardinal de Bourbon, M. de Beaujeu, and Madame 
J eanne de France, and Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon, and 
I know not whom else ; ail being illuminated with torches. 
The rabble were admiring. 

Happy painter. Jehan Fourbault!” said Gringoire with a 
deep sigh ; and he turned his back upon the bannerets and 
pennons. A Street opened before him ; he thought it so dark 
and deserted that he hoped to there escape from ail the rumors 
as well as from ail the gleams of the festival. At the end of 
a few moments his foot came in contact with an obstacle ; he 
stumbled and fell. It was the May truss, which the clerks of 
the clerks’ law court had deposited that morning at the door 
of a president of the parliaraent, in honor of the solemnity of 


FEOM CHAEYBDIS TO SCYLLA. 


59 


tlie day. Gringoire bore this iiew disaster heroically; he 
picked liiiiiself up, and reacbed the water’s edge. After leav- 
ing behind him the civic Tournelle * and the criminal tower, 
and skirted the great walls of the king’s garden, on that 
unpaved strand where the nmd reached to his ankles, he 
reached the western point of the city, and considered for some 
time the islet of the Passeur-aux-Vaches, which has disap- 
peared beneath the bronze horse of the Pont Neuf. The islet 
appeared to him in the shadow like a black mass, beyond the 
narrow strip of whitish water which separated him from it. 
One could divine by the ray of a tiny light the sort of hut in 
the form of a beehive where the ferry man of cows took refuge 
at night. 

Happy ferryman ! ” thought Gringoire ; you do not 
dream of glory, and you do not make marriage songs ! What 
matters it to you, if kings and Duchesses of Burgundy marry ? 
You know no other daisies {marguerites) than those which 
your April greensward gives your cows to browse upon ; while 
I, a poet, am hooted, and shiver, and owe twelve sous, and 
the soles of my shoes are so transparent, that they might 
serve as glasses for your lahtern! Thanks, ferryman, your 
cabin rests my eyes, and makes me forget Paris ! ’’ 

He was roused from his almost lyric ecstacy, by a big 
double Saint- Jean cracker, which suddenly went off from the 
happy cabin. It was the cow ferryman, who was taking his 
part in the rejoicings of the day, and letting off fireworks. 

This cracker made Gringoire’s skin bristle up ail over. 
^^Accursed festival!’’ he exclaimed, ^^wilt thou pursue me 
every where ? Oh ! good God ! even to the ferryman’s ! ” 

Then he looked at the Seine at his feet, and a horrible 
temptation took possession of him : 

Oh ! ” said he, “ I would gladly drown myself, were the 
water not so cold ! ” 

Then a desperate resolution occurred to him. It was, since 
he could not escape from the Pope of the Pools, from Jehan 
Fourbault’s bannerets, from May trusses, from squibs and 
crackers, to go to the Place de Grève. 

* A chamber of the ancient parliament of Paris. 


60 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ At least,” lie said to himself, I shall there hâve a fire- 
>rand of joy wherewith to warm myself, and I can sup on 
^oiiie crumbs of the three great armorial bearings of royal 
nigar which hâve been erected on the public refreshment-stall 
.)f the city. 




CHAPTER IL 

THE PLACE DE GREVE. 

There remains to-day but a very imperceptible vestige of 
the Place de Grève, sucb as it existed then ; it consists in the 
charming little turret, wbich occupies the angle north of the 
Place, and which, already enshrouded in the ignoble plaster 
which fills with paste the délicate Unes of its sculpture, would 
soon hâve disappeared, perhaps submerged by that flood of 
new houses which so rapidly devours ail the ancient façades 
of Paris. 

The persons who, like ourselves, never cross the Place de 
Grève without casting a glance of pity and sympathy on that 
poor turret strangled between two hovels of the time of Louis 
XV., can easily reconstruct in their minds the aggregate of 
édifices to which it belonged, and find again entire in it 
the ancient Gothic place of the fifteenth century. 

It was then, as it is to-day, an irregular trapezoid, bordered 
on one side by the quay, and on the other three by a sériés of 
lofty, narrow, and gloomy houses. By day, one could admire 
the variety of its édifices, ail sculptured in stone or wood, and 
already presenting complété specimeps of the different do- 
mestic architectures of the Middle Ages, running back from 
the fifteenth to the eleventh century, from the casement 
which had begun to dethrone the arch, to the Roman semi- 
circle, which had been supplanted by the ogive, and which 
still occupies, below it, the first story of that ancient house de 
la Tour Roland, at the corner of the Place upon the Seine, on 

61 


62 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the side of the Street with the Tannerie. At night, one could 
distinguish nothing of ail that mass of buildings, except tlie 
black indentation of the roofs, unrolling their chain of acute 
angles round the place; for one of the radical différences 
between the cities of that time, and the cities of the présent 
day, lay in the façades which looked upon the places and 
streets, and which were then gables. For the last two centu- 
ries the houses hâve been turned round. 

In the centre of the eastern side of the Place, rose a heavy 
and hybrid construction, formed of three buildings placed in 
juxtaposition. It was called by three names which explain 
its history, its destination, and its architecture : The House 
of the Dauphin,’’ because Charles V., when Dauphin, had 
inhabited it; ^^The Marchandise,” because it had served as 
town hall ; and “ The Pillared House ” (domus ad piloria,) be- 
cause of a sériés of large pillars which sustained the three 
stories. The city found there ail that is required for a city 
like Paris ; a chapel in which to pray to God ; a plaidoyer, or 
pleading room, in which to hold hearings, and to repel, at 
need, the King’s people ; and under the roof, an arsenac full 
of artillery. For the bourgeois of Paris were aware that it is 
not sufïicient to pray in every conjuncture, and to plead for the 
franchises of the city, and they had always in reserve, in the 
garret of the town hall, a few good rusty arquebuses. The 
Grève had then that sinister aspect which it préservés to-day 
from the execrable ideas which it awakens, and froni the 
sombre town hall of Dominique Bocador, which has replaced 
the Pillared House. It must be admitted that a permanent 
gibbet and a pillory, a justice and a ladder,” as they were 
called in that day, erected side by side in the centre of the 
pavement, contributed not a little to cause eyes to be turned 
away from that fatal place, where so many beings full of life 
and health hâve agonized ; where, fifty years later, that fever 
of Saint Vallier was destined to hâve its birth, that terror of 
the scaffold, the most monstrous of ail maladies because it 
cornes not from God, but from man. 

It is a consoling idea (let us remark in passing), to think 
that the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still 


THE PLACE DE G LEVE. 


63 


encumbered witli its iroii wlieels, its stone gibbets, and ail its 
parapheriialia of torture, permanent and riveted to the pave- 
ment, tbe Grève, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Cross 
du Trahoir, the Marché aux Pourceaux, that hideous Mont- 
faucon, the barrier des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the 
Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte 
Saint Jacques, without reckoning the innumerable ladders of 
the provosts, the bishop of the chapters, of the abbots, of the 
priors, who had the decree of life and death, — without reckon- 
ing the judicial drownings in the river Seine ; it is consoling 
to-day, after having lost successively ail the pièces of its 
\ armor, its luxury of forment, its penalty of imagination and 
fancy, its torture for which it reconstructed every five years 
a leather bed at the Grand Châtelet, that ancient suzerain of 
feudal society almost expunged from our laws and our cities, 
hunted from code to code, chased from place to place, has no 
longer, in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored 
corner of the Grève, — than a misérable guillotine, furtive, 
uneasy, shameful, which seems always afraid of being caught 
in the act, so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its 
blow. 




CHAPTER III. 

KISSES FOR BLOWS. 

When Pierre Gringoire arrived on the Place de Grève, he 
was paralyzed. He had directed his course across the Pont 
aux Meuniers, in order to avoid the rabble on the Pont au 
Change, and the pennons of Jehan Eourbault; but the wheels 
of ail the bishop’s mills had splashed him as he passed, and 
his doublet was drenched ; it seemed to him besides, that the 
failure of his piece had rendered him still more sensible to 
cold than usual. Hence he made haste to draw near the bon- 
fire, which was burning magnificently in the middle of the 
Place. But a considérable crowd formed a circle around it. 

‘^Accursed Parisians!’^ he said to himself (for Gringoire, 
like a true dramatic poet, was subject to monologues) ^Hhere 
they are obstructing my lire ! Hevertheless, I am greatly in 
need of a chimney corner; my shoes drink in the water, and 
ail those cursed mills wept upon me ! That devil of a Bishop 
of Paris, with his mills ! l’d just like to know what use a 
bishop can make of a mill ! Does he expect to become a 
miller instead of a bishop ? If only my malédiction is needed 
for that, I bestow it upon him. and his cathédral, and his 
mills ! J ust see if those boobies will put themselves out ! 
Move aside ! l’d like to know what they are doing there ! 
They are warning themselves, much pleasure may it give 
them ! They are watching a hundred fagots burn ; a fine 
spectacle ! 


64 


KISSES FOR BLOWS. 


65 


On looking more closely, he perceived that the circle was 
much larger than was required simply for the purpose of 
getting warm at the king’s tire, and that this concourse of 
people had not been attracted solely by the beauty of the 
hundred fagots which were burning. 

In a vast space left free between the crowd and the fire, i 
young girl was dancing. 

Whether this young girl was a human being, a fairy, or au 
an gel, is what Gringoire, sceptical philosopher and ironical 
poet that he was, coiild not décidé at the first moment, so 
fascinated was he by this dazzling vision. 

She was not tall, though she seemed so, so boldly did her 
slender form dart about. She was swarthy of complexion, 
but one divined that, by day, her skin must possess that 
beautiful golden tone of the Andalusians and the Koman 
women. Her little foot, too, was Andalusian, for it was both 
pinched and at ease in its graceful shoe. She danced, she 
turned, she whirled rapidly. about on an old Persian rug, 
spread negligently under her feet; and each time that her 
radiant face passed before you, as she whirled, her great black 
eyes darted a flash of lightning at you. 

Ail around her, ail glances were riveted, ail mouths open ; 
and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the 
Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised 
above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with 
her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puff- 
ing ont, her bare shoulders, her délicate limbs, which lier 
petticoat revealed at times, her black hair, her eyes of flame, 
she was a supernatural créature. 

In truth,’’ said Gringoire to himself, “ she is a sala- 
mander, she is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bac- 
chante of the Menelean Mount ! ” 

At that moment, one of the salamandePs braids of hair 
became unfastened, and a piece of yellow copper which was 
attached to it, rolled to the ground. 

Hé, no ! ” said he, she is a gypsy ! ’’ 

Ail illusions had disappeared. 

She began her dance once more ; she took from the ground 


66 


NOTRE-DAME. 


two swords, whose points she rested against her brow, and 
which she inade to turn in one direction, while she turned in 
the other; it was a purely gypsy effect. But, disenchanted 
thougli Gringoire was, the whole effect of this picture was not 
without its charm and its magic ; the bonfire illuminated, 
with a red flaring light, which trembled, ail alive, over the 
circle of faces in the crowd, on the brow of the young girl, 
and at the background of the Place cast a pallid refiection, 
on one side upon the ancient, black, and wrinkled façade of 
the House of Pillais, on the other, upon the old stone 
gibbet. 

Ainong the thousands of visages which that light tinged 
with scarlet, there was one which seemed, even more than ail 
the others, absorbed in contemplation of the dancer. It was 
the face of a man, austere, calm, and sombre. This man, 
whose costume was concealed by the crowd which surrounded 
him, did not appear to be more than five and thirty years of 
âge ; nevertheless, he was bald ; he had merely a few tufts of 
thin, gray hair on his temples ; his broad, high forehead had 
begun to be furrowed with wrinkles, but his deep-set eyes 
sparkled with extraordinary youthfulness, an ardent life, a 
profound passion. He kept them fixed incessantly on the 
gypsy? and, while the giddy young- girl of sixteen danced and 
whirled, for the pleasure of ail, his revery seemed to become 
more and more sombre. From time to time, a smile and a 
sigh met upon his lips, but the smile was more melancholy 
than the sigh. 

The young girl, stopped at length, breathless, and the peu- 
ple applauded her lovingly. 

‘^Djali ! ’’ said the gypsy. 

Then Gringoire saw corne up to her, a pretty little white 
goat, alert, wide-awake, glossy, with gilded horns, gilded 
hoofs, and gilded collar, which he had not hitherto per- 
ceived, and which had remained lying curled up on one corner 
of the carpet watching his mistress dance. 

‘‘Djali ! said the dancer, ^Gt is your turn.” 

And, seating herself, she gracefully presented her tam- 
bourine to the goat. 


RISSES FOR BLOWS. 


67 


she continued, ‘‘what month is this ? 

The goat lifted its fore foot, and struck one blow npon 
the tambourine. It was the first month in the year, in 
fact. 

‘‘Djali/’ pursued the young girl, turning her tambourine 
round, “ what day of the month is this ? ” 

Djali raised his little gilt hoof, and struck six blows on the 
tambourine. 

‘‘Djali,’’ pursued the Egyptian, with still another move- 
ment of the tambourine, “ what hour of the day is it ? ” 

Djali struck seven blows. At that moment, the dock of 
the Pillar House rang ont seven. 

The people were amazed. 

“ There’s sorcery at the bottom of it,” said a sinister voice 
in the crowd. It jvas that of the bald man, who never re- 
moved his eyes from the gypsy. 

She shuddered and turned round ; but applause broke forth 
and drowned the morose exclamation. 

It even effaced it so completely from her mind, that she 
continued to question her goat. 

“Djali, what does Master Guichard Grand-E-emy, captain of 
the pistoliers of the town do, at the procession of Candle- 
mas ? ” 

Djali reared himself on his hind legs, and began to bleat, 
marching along with so much dainty gravity, that the entire 
circle of spectators burst into a laugh at this parody of the 
interested devoutness of the captain of pistoliers. 

“ Djali,” resumed the young girl, emboldened by her grow- 
ing success, “how preaches Master Jacques Charmolue, procu- 
rator to the king in the ecclesiastical court ? ” 

The goat seated himself on his hind quarters, and began 
to bleat, waving his fore feet in so strange a manner, that, 
with the exception of the bad French, and worse Latin, 
Jacques Charmolue was there complété, — gesture, accent, and 
attitude. 

And the crowd applauded louder than ever. 

“ Sacrilege ! profanation ! ” resumed the voice of the bald 
man. 


68 


NOTRE-DAME. 


The gypsy turned round once more. 

Ah ! said she, Tis that villanous man ! ’’ Then, thrust- 
ing her under lip out beyond the upper, she made a little 
pout, which appeared to be fainiliar to her, executed a pirou- 
ette on her heel, and set about collecting in her tambourine 
the gifts of the multitude. 

Big blanks, little blanks, targes * and eagle liards showered 
into it. 

Ail at once, she passed in front of Gringoire. Gringoire 
put his hand so recklessly into his pocket that she halted. 

The devil ! ’’ said the poet, finding at the bottom of his 
pocket the reality, that is, to say, a void. In the meantime, 
the pretty girl stood there, gazing at him with her big eyes, 
and holding out her tambourine to him and waiting. Grin- 
goire broke into a violent perspiration. ^ 

If he had ail Peru in his pocket, he would certainly hâve 
given it to the dancer ; but Gringoire had not Peru, and, 
moreover, America had not yet been discovered 

Happily, an unexpected incident came to his rescue. 

^^Will you take yourself olf, you Egyptian grasshopper ? ’’ 
cried a sharp voice, which proceeded from the darkest corner 
of the Place. 

The young girl turned round in affright. It was no longer 
the voice of the bald man; it was the voice of a woman, 
bigoted and malicious. 

However, this cry, which alarmed the gypsy, delighted a 
troop of children who were prowling about there. 

“It is the recluse of the Tour-Koland,” they exclaimed, 
with wild laughter, “it is the sacked nun who is scolding ! 
Hasn’t she supped ? Let’s carry her the remains of the city 
refreshments ! ” 

Ail rushed towards the Pillar House. 

In the meanwhile, Gringoire had taken advantage of the 
dancer’s embarrassment, to disappear. The children’s shouts 
had reminded him that he, also, had not supped, so he ran to 

* A blank: an old French coin; six blanks were worth two sous and a 
half; targe, an ancient coin of Burgundy, a fartliing. 


KISSES FOR BLOWS. 


69 


the public buffet. But the little rascals bad better legs than 
he; when he arrived, they bad stripped tbe table. Tbere 
remained not so mucb as a misérable camiclion at five sous 
tbe pound. Notbing remained upon tbe wall but slender 
lieurs-de-lis, mingled witb rose busbes, painted in 1434 by 
Mathieu Biterne. It was a meagre supper. 

It is an unpleasànt tbing to go to bed witbout supper, it is 
a still less pleasant tbing not to sup and not to know wbere 
one is to sleep. Tbat was Gringoire^s condition. No supper, 
no sbelter ; be saw bimself pressed on ail sides by necessity, 
and be found necessity very crabbed. He bad long ago dis- 
covered tbe trutb, tbat Jupiter created men during a fit of 
misantbropy, and tbat during a wise man’s wbole life, bis 
destiny bolds bis pbilosopby in a state of siégé. As for bim- 
self, be bad never seen tbe blockade so complété ; he heard 
bis stomach sounding a parley, and he considered it very mucb 
out of place tbat evil destiny should capture bis pbilosopby 
by famine. 

Tbis melancholy revery was absorbing bim more and more, 
when a song, quaint but full of SAveetness, suddenly tore bim 
from it. It was tbe young gypsy wbo was singing. 

Her voice was like ber dancing, like ber beauty. It was 
indefinable and cbarming ; sometbing pure and sonorous, 
aerial, winged, so to speak. Tbere were continuai outbursts, 
mélodies, unexpected cadences, then simple phrases strewn 
witb aerial and hissing notes ; tben floods of scales which 
would bave put a nightingale to rout, but in wbicb barmony 
was always présent ; then soft modulations of octaves wbicb 
rose and fell, like the bosom of tbe young singer. Her beau- 
tiful face followed, with singular mobility, ail tbe caprices of 
her song, from the wildest inspiration to tbe cbastest dignity. 
One would bave pronounced her now a mad créature, now a 
queen. 

The words wbicb sbe sang were in a tongue unknown to 
Gringoire, and wbicb seemed to bim to be unknown to berself, 
so little relation did the expression wbicb sbe imparted to her 
song bear to the sense of the words. Thus, these four lines, 
in ber mouth, were madly gay, — 


70 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Un cofre de gran riqueza 
Hallaron dentro un pilar, 

Dentro del, nue vas banderas 
Con figuras de espantar.* 

And an instant afterwards, at the accents which. sh.e imparted 
to this stanza, — 

Alarabes de cavallo 
Sin poderse menear, 

Con espadas, y los cuellos, 

Ballestas de buen echar, 

Gringoire felt the tears start to his eyes. Nevertheless, her 
song breathed joy, most of ail, and she seemed to sing like a 
bird, from serenity and heedlessness. 

The gypsy’s song had disturbed Gringoire’s revery as the 
swan disturbs the water. He listened in a sort of rapture, 
and forgetfulness of everything. It was the first moment in 
the course of many hours when he did not feel that he suf- 
fered. 

The moment was brief. 

The same woman’s voice, which had interrupted the gypsy’s 
dance, interrupted her song. 

Will you hold your tongue, you cricket of hell ? ’’ it cried, 
still from the same obscure corner of the place. 

The poor cricket stopped short. Gringoire covered up 
his ears. 

Oh ! ” he exclaimed, accursed saw with missing teeth, 
which cornes to break the lyre ! ” 

Meanwhile, the other spectators murmured like himself ; 

To the de vil with the sacked nun ! ” said some of them. 
And the old invisible kill-joy might hâve had occasion to 
repent of her aggressions against the gypsy had their atten- 
tion not been diverted at this moment by the procession of 
the Pope of the Pools, which, after having traversed many 

* A coffer of great richness 

In a pillar’s beart they found, 

Within it lay new banners, 

With figures to astound. • 


KISSES FOE BLOWS. 71 

streets and squares, debouched on the Place de Grève, with 
ail its torches and ail its uproar. 

This procession, which our readers hâve seen set ont from 
the Palais de Justice, had organized on the way, and had been 
recruited by ail the knaves, idle thieves, and unemployed vaga- 
bonds in Paris ; so that it presented a very respectable aspect 
when it arrived ât the Grève. 

First came Egypt. The Duke of Egypt headed it, on horse- 
back, with his counts on foot holding his bridle and stir- 
rups for him ; behind them, the male and female Egyptians, 
pell-mell, with their little children crying on their shoulders ; 
ail — duke, counts, and populace — in rags and tatters. Then 
came the Kingdom of Argot ; that is to say, ail the thieves of 
France, arranged according to the order of their dignity ; the 
minor people walking first. Thus defiled by fours, with the 
divers insignia of their grades, in that strange faculty, most of 
them lame, some cripples, others one-armed, shop clerks, pil- 
grims, hubinsy bootblacks, thimble-riggers, Street arabs, beg- 
gars, the blear-eyed beggars, thieves, the weakly, vagabonds, 
merchants, sham soldiers, goldsmiths, passed masters of pick- 
pockets, isolated thieves. A catalogue that would weary 
Homer. In the centre of the conclave of the passed masters 
of pickpockets, one had some difficulty in distinguishing the 
King of Argot, the grand coësre, so called, crouching in a 
little cart drawn by two big dogs. After the kingdom of the 
Argotiers, came the Empire of Galilee. Guillaume Pousseau, 
Emperor of the Empire of Galilee, marched majestically in 
his robe of purple, spotted with wine, preceded by buffoons 
wrestling and executing military dances ; surrounded by his 
macebearers, his pickpockets and clerks of the chamber of 
accounts. Last of ail came the corporation of law clerks, 
with its maypoles crowned with flowers, its black robes, its 
music worthy of the orgy, and its large candies of yellow 
wax. In the centre of this crowd, the grand officers of the 
Brotherhood of Fools bore on their shoulders a litter more 
loaded down with candies than the reliquary of Sainte-Gene- 
viève in time of pest ; and on this litter shone resplendent, 
with crosier, cope, and mitre, the new Pope of the Fools, the 
bellringer of Hotre-Dame, Quasimodo the hunchback. 


72 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Each section of tMs grotesque procession had its own music. 
The Egyptians made their druins and African tambourines 
resound. The slang men, not a very musical race, still clung 
to the goat’s horn trumpet and the Gothic rubebbe of the 
twelfth century. The Empire of Galilee was not much more 
advanced ; among its music one could hardly distinguish sonie 
misérable rebec, from the infancy of the art, still imprisoned 
in the ré-la-mi. But it was around the Pope of the Pools that 
ail the musical riches of the epoch were display ed in a magni- 
ficent discord. It was nothing but soprano rebecs, counter- 
tenor rebecs, and ténor rebecs, not to reckon the flûtes and 
brass instruments. Alas ! our readers will remember that this 
was Gringoire’s orchestra. 

It is difficulf to convey an idea of the degree of proud and 
blissful expansion to which the sad and hideous visage of 
Quasimodo had attained during the transit from the Palais de 
Justice, to the Place de Grève. It was the flrst enjoyment of 
self-love that he had ever experienced. Down to that day, he 
had known only humiliation, disdain for his condition, disgust 
for his person. Hence, deaf though he was, he enjoyed, like 
a véritable pope, the acclamations of that throng, which he 
hated because he felt that he was hated by it. Wh^it mat- 
tered it that his people consisted of a pack of fools, cripples, 
thieves, and beggars ? it was still a people and he was its 
sovereign. And he accepted seriously ail this ironical ap- 
plause, ail this derisive respect, with which the crowd mingled, 
it must be admitted, a good deal of very real fear. Eor the 
hunchback was robust ; for the bandy-legged fellow was agile ; 
for the deaf man was malicious : three qualifies which temper 
ridicule. 

We are far from belle ving, however, that the new Pope of 
the Pools understood both the sentiments which he felt and 
the sentiments which he inspired. The spirit which was 
lodged in this failure of a body had, necessarily, something 
incomplète and deaf about it. Thus, what he felt at the mo- 
ment was to him, absolutely vague, indistinct, and confused. 
Only joy made itself felt, only pride dominât ed. Around that 
sambre and unhappy face, there hung a radiance. 


KISSES FOB BLOWS. 


73 


It was, then, not without surprise and alarm, that at the 
very moment when Quasimodo was passing the Pillar House, 
in that semi-intoxicated state, a man was seen to dart from 
the crowd, and to tear from his hands, with a gesture of anger, 
his crosier of gilded wood, the emblem of his mock popeship. 

This man, this rash individual, was the man with the bald 
brow, who, a moment earlier, standing with the gypsy^s 
group had chilled the poor girl with his words of menace and 
of hatred. He was dressed in an eccleslastical costume. At 
the moment when he stood forth from the crowd, Gringoire, 
who had not noticed him up to that time, recognized him : 
^‘Hold!’^ he said, with an exclamation of astonishment. 

Eh ! ’tis my master in Hermes, Dom Claude Erollo, the 
archdeacon ! What the de vil does he want of that old one- 
eyed fellow ? He’ll get himself devoured ! ” 

A cry of terror arose, in fact. The formidable Quasimodo 
had hurled himself from the litter, and the women turned 
aside their eyes in order not to see him tear the archdeacon 
asunder. 

He made one bound as far as the priest, looked at him, and 
fell upon his knees. 

The priest tore off his tiara, broke his crozier, and rent his 
tinsel cope. 

Quasimodo remained on his knees, with head bent and hands 
clasped. Then there was established between them a strange 
dialogue of signs and gestures, for neither of them spoke. 
The priest, erect on his feet, irritated, threatening, imperious ; 
Quasimodo, prostrate, humble, suppliant. And, nevertheless, 
it is certain that Quasimodo could hâve crushed the priest 
with his thumb. 

At length the archdeacon, giving Quasimodo’s powerful 
shoulder a rough shake, made him a sign to rise and follow 
him. 

Quasimodo rose. 

Then the Brotherhood of Pools, their first stupor having 
passed off, wished to defend their pope, so abruptly dethroned. 
The Egyptians, the men of slang, and ail the fraternity of 
law clerks, gathered bowling round the priest. 


74 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Quasimodo placed himself in front of the priest, set in play 
the muscles of his athletic fists, and glared upon tlie assailants 
with the snarl of an angry tiger. 

The priest resumed his sombre gravity, made a sign to Quasi- 
modo, and retired in silence. 

Quasimodo walked in front of him, scattering the crowd as 
he passed. 

When they had traversed the populace and the Place, the 
cloud of curions and idle were minded to follow them. Quasi- 
modo then constituted himself the rearguard, and followed 
the archdeacon, walking backwards, squat, surly, monstrous, 
bristling, gathering up his limbs, licking his boar’s tusks, 
growling like a wild beast, and imparting to the crowd immense 
vibrations, with a look or a gesture. 

Both were allowed to plunge into a dark and narrow Street, 
where no one dared to venture after them ; so thoroughly did 
the mere chimera of Quasimodo gnashing his teeth bar the 
entrance. 

Here’s a marvellous thing,” said Gringoire j but where 
the deuce shall I lind some supper ? 



CHAPTEE ly. 

THE INCONVENIENCES OF FOLLOWING A PRETTY WOMAN 
THROUGH THE STREETS IN THE EVENING. 

Gringoire set out to follow the gypsy at ail hazards. He 
had seen her, accompatiied by her goat, take to the Eue de la 
Coutellerie ; he took the Eue de la Coutellerie. 

Why not ? ” he said to himself. 

Gringoire, a practical philosopher of the streets of Paris, 
had noticed that nothing is more propitious to revery than 
following a pretty woman without knowing whither she is 
going. There was in this voluntary abdication of his free- 
will, in this fancy submitting itself to another fancy, which 
suspects it not, a mixture of fantastic independence and blind 
obedience, something indescribable, intermediate between slav- 
ery and liberty, which pleased Gringore, — a spirit essentially 
compound, undecided, and complex, holding the extremities of 
ail extremes, incessantly suspended between ail human pro- 
pensities, and neutralizing one by the other. He was fond of 
comparing himself to Mahomet’s cofïin, attracted in two dif- 
ferent directions by two loadstones, and hesitating eternally 
between the heights and the depths, between the vault and the 
pavement, between fall and ascent, between zénith and nadir. 

If Gringoire had lived in our day, what a fine middle course 
he would hold between classicism and romanticism ! 

But he was not sufficiently primitive to live three hundred 
years, and ’tis a pity. His absence is a void which is but too 
sensibly felt to-day. 


Î5 


76 


NOTEL-DAME. 


Moreover, for the purpose of thus followiiig passers-by (and 
especially female passers-by) in the streets, which Gringoire 
was fond of doing, there is no better disposition than igno- 
rance of where one is going to sleep. 

So he walked along, very thoughtfully, behind the young 
irl, who hastened her pace and made her goat trot as she 
iw the bourgeois returning home and the taverns — the only 
ohops which had been open that day — closing. 

^‘After allj” he half thought to himself, ‘^she must lodge 
somewhere ; gypsies hâve kindly hearts. Who knows ? — ’’ 
And in the points of suspense which he placed after this re- 
reticence in his mind, there lay I know not what flattering ideas. 

Meanwhile, from time to time, as he passed the last groups 
of bourgeois closing their doors, he caught some scraps of 
their conversation, which broke the thread of his pleasant 
hypothèses. 

Now it was two old men accosting each other. 

Do you know that it is cold, Master Thibaut Fernicle ? 
(Gringoire had been aware of this since the beginning of the 
winter.) 

^‘Yes, indeed, Master Boniface Disome! Are we going to 
hâve a winter such as we had three years ago, in ’80, when 
wood cost eight sous the measure ? ” 

Bah ! that’s nothing, Master Thibaut, compared with the 
winter of 1407, when it froze from St. Martin’s Day until 
Candlemas ! and so cold that the pen of the registrar of the 
parliament froze every three words, in the Grand Chamber ! 
which interrupted the registration of justice.’^ 

Further on there were two female neighbors at their Win- 
dows, holding candies, which the fog caused to sputter. 

Has your husband told you about the mishap, Mademoi- 
selle la Boudraque ? ’’ 

^^No. What is it, Mademoiselle Turquant?^^ 

“ The horse of M. Gilles Godin, the notary at the Châtelet, 
took fright at the Flemings and their procession, and over- 
turned Master Philippe Avrillot, lay monk of the Célestins.'' 

“ Keally ? ” 

Actually.” 


FOLLOWING A PBETTY WOMAN. 


77 

A bourgeois horse ! ’tis rather too much ! If it had been 
a cavalry horse, well and good ! ” 

And the Windows were closed. But Gringoire had lost the 
.hread of his ideas, nevertheless. 

Fortunately, he speedily found it again, and he knotted it 
together without difficulty, tlianks to the gypsy, thanks to 
Djali, who still walked in front of him ; two fine, délicate, and 
charming créatures, whose tiny feet, beautiful forms, and 
graceful manners he was engaged in adiniring, alinost con- 
fusing theni in his contemplation ; believing thein to be both 
young girls, from their intelligence and good friendship ; re- 
garding them both as goats, — so far as the lightness, agility, 
and dexterity of their walk were concerned. 

But the streets were becoming blacker and more deserted 
every moment. The curfew had sounded long ago, and it was 
only at rare intervals now that they encountered a passer-by 
in the Street, or a light in the Windows. Gringoire had 
become involved, in his pursuit of the gypsy, in that inextrb 
cable labyrinth of alleys, squares, and closed courts whicb 
surround the ancient sepulchre of the Saints-Innocents, and 
which resembles a bail of thread tangled by a cat. ‘‘ Here 
are streets which possess but little logic ! ’’ said Gringoire, 
lost ;n the thousands of circuits which returned upon them^ 
selves incessantly, but where the young girl pursued a road 
which seemed familiar to her, without hésitation and with 
a step which became ever more rapid. As for him, he 
would hâve been utterly ignorant of his situation had he not 
espied, in passing, at the turn of a Street, the octagonal mass 
of the pillory of the fish markets, the open-work summit of 
which threw its black, fretted outlines clearly upon a window 
which was still lighted in the Bue Verdelet. 

The young girl’s attention had been attracted to him for the 
last few moments ; she had repeatedly turned her head towards 
him with uneasiness ; she had even once corne to a standstill, 
and taking advantage of a ray of light which escaped from a 
half-open bakery to survey him intently, from head to foot, then, 
having cast this glance, Gringoire had seen her make that little 
pont which he had already noticed, after which she passed on. 


78 


IsOTHE-BAME. 


This little pout had furnished Gringoire with food for 
thought. There was certaiidy botli disdaiii and mockery in 
that graceful grimace. So lie dropped his head, began to 
count the paving-stones, and to follow the young girl at a lit- 
tle greater distance, wlien, at tlie turn of a strnet, wbicb liad 
cansed him to lose siglit of ber, he heard her utter a piercing cry. 

He hastened his steps. 

The Street was full of shadows. Nevertheless, a twist of 
tow soaked in oil, which burned in a cage at the feet of the 
Holy Virgin at the Street corner, permitted Gringoire to make 
ont the gypsy struggling in the arms of two men, who were 
endeavoring to stifle her cries. The poor little goat, in great 
alarm, loAvered his horns and bleated. 

Help ! gentlemen of the watch ! shonted Gringoire, and 
advanced bravely. One of the men who held the young girl 
turned towards him. It was the formidable visage of Quasi- 
modo. 

Gringoire did not take to flight, but neither did he advance 
another step. 

Quasimodo came up to him, tossed him four paces away on 
the pavement with a backward turn of the hand, and plunged 
rapidly into the gloom, bearing the young girl folded across 
one arm like a silken scarf . His companion f ollowed him, and 
the poor goat ran after them ail, bleating plaintively. 

“Murder ! murder ! shrieked the unhappy gypsy. 

“ Hait, rascals, and yield me that wench ! ’’ suddenly shouted 
in a voice of thunder, a cavalier who appeared suddenly from 
a neighboring square. 

It was a captain of the king’s archers, armed from head to 
fpot, with his sword in his hand. 

He tore the gypsy from the arms of the dazed Quasimodo, 
threw her across his saddle, and at the moment when the ter- 
rible hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon 
him to' regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who fol- 
lowed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their 
two-edged swords in their fists. It was a squad of the king’s 
police, which was -making the rounds, by order of Messire 
Robert d’Estouteville, gnard of the provostship of Paris. 


FOLLOWING A PliETTY WOMAN. 


79 


Quasimodo was surrouiided, seized, garroted ; he roared, lie 
foamed at tlie moiith, he bit; and had it been broad da.ylight, 
there is no doubt that his face alone, rendered more liideous by 
wrath, would hâve put the entire squad to flight. But by night 
ho was deprived of his most formidable weapon, his ugliness. 

His companion had disappeared during the struggle. 

The gypsy gracefully raised herself upright upon the officer’s 
saddle, placed both hauds upon the young man’s shoulders, 
and gazed fixedly at him for several seconds, as though en- 
chanted Avith his good looks and with the aid Avhich he had 
just rendered her. Then breaking silence lirst, she said to 
him, making her sweet voice still sweeter than usual, — 

“ What is your name, monsieur le gendarme ? ’’ 

“Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, at your service, my 
beauty ! replied the officer, drawing himself up. 

Thanks,’^ said she. 

And while Captain Phœbus was turning up his moustache 
in Burgundian fashion. she slipped from the horse, like an 
arrow falling to earth, and fled! 

A flash of lightnmg would hâve vanished less quickly. 

^‘Nombrill of the Pope ! said the captain, causing Quasi- 
modo’s straps to be drawn tighter, I should hâve preferred 
to keep the wench.’^ 

What Avould y ou hâve, captain ? ’’ said one gendarme. 

The warbler has ded, and the bat remains. 




CHAPTEE, V. 

RESULT OF THE DANGERS. 

Gringoire, thoroughly stunned by bis fall, remained oi» 
the pavement in front of the Holy Virgin at tbe Street corner. 
Little by little, lie regained bis senses ; at first, for severai 
minutes, be was floating in a sort of balf-somnolent revery, 
wbicb was not witbout its cbarm, in wbicb æriel figures oî 
tbe gypsy and ber goat were coupled witb Quasimodo’s beavy 
fist. Tbis -State lasted but a sbort time. A decidedly vivid 
sensation of cold in tbe part of bis body wbicb was in con- 
tact witb tbe pavement, suddenly aroused bim and caused bis 
spirit to return to tbe surface. 

Wbence cornes tbis cbill ? be said abruptly, to bimself. 
He tben perceived tbat be was lying balf in tbe middle of tbe 
gutter. 

Tbat devil of a buncbbacked cyclops ! be muttered be- 
tween bis teetb ; and be tried to rise. But be was too mucb 
dazed and bruised ; be was forced to remain wbere be was. 
Moreover, bis band was tolerably free ; be stopped up bis nose 
and resigned bimself. 

Tbe mud of Paris,” be said to bimself — for decidedly be 
tbougbt tbat be was sure tbat tbe gutter would prove bis 
refuge for tbe nigbt ; and wbat can one do in a refuge, except 
dream ? — tbe mud of Paris is particularly stinking ; it must 
contain a great deal of volatile and nitric salts. Tbat, more- 
over, is tbe opinion of Master Nicbolas Flamel, and of tbe 
alcbemists — ” 

Tbe Word alcliemists suddenly suggested to bis mind tbe 

80 


i 


RESULT OF THE DANGERS. 


81 


idea of Arclideacon Claude Frollo. He recalled the violent 
scene wliich he had just witnessed in part ; that the gypsy was 
struggling with two men, that Quasimodo had a coinpanion ; 
and the morose and haughty face of the archdeacon passed 
confusedly through his memory. That would be strange l ” 
he said to himself. And on that fact and that basis he began 
to construct a fantastic édifice of hypothesis, that card-castle 
of philosophers ; then, suddenly returning once more to 
reality, “ Corne ! l’m freezing ! ” he ejaculated. 

The place was, in fact, becoming less and less tenable. 
Each molécule of the gutter bore away a molécule of beat 
radiating from Gringoire’s loins, and the equilibrium between 
the température of his body and the température of the brook, 
began to be established in rough fashion. 

Quite a different annoyance suddenly assailed him. A group 
of children, those little bare-footed savages who hâve always 
roamed the pavements of Paris under the eternal naine of 
gamins^ and who, when we were also children ourselves, threw 
stones at ail of us in the afternoon, when we came ont of 
school, because our trousers were not torn — a swarm of these 
young scamps rushed towards the square where Gringoire lay, 
with shouts and laughter which seemed to pay but little heed 
to the sleep of the neighbors. They were dragging after them 
some sort of hideous sack ; and the noise of their wooden 
shoes alone would hâve roused the dead. Gringoire who was 
not quite dead yet, half raised himself. 

^^Ohé, Hennequin Dandéche ! Ohè, Jehan Pincebourde ! ” 
they shouted in deafening tones, old Eustache Moubon, the 
merchant at the corner, has just died. WeVe got his straw 
pallet, we’re going to hâve a bonfire out of it. It’s the turn 
of the Flemish to-day ! ’’ 

And behold, they flung the pallet directly upon Gringoire, 
beside whom they had arrived, without espying him. At the 
same time, one of them took a handful of straw and set ofE 
to light it at the wick of the good Virgin. 

S’death ! growled Gringoire, am I going to be too warm 
now ? 

It was a critical moment. He was caught between fire and 


82 


NOTRE-DAME. 


water; he made a superhuman effort, the effort of a counter^ 
feiter of money who is on the point of being boiled, and who 
seeks to escape. He rose to his feet, flung aside the straw 
pallet upon the Street urchins, and fied. 

Holy Virgin ! shrieked the children ; ffis the merchant’s 
ghost!^’ 

And they üed in their turn. 

The straw mattress remained master of the field. Belle- 
foret, Father Le Juge, and Corrozet affirm that it was picked 
up on the morrow, with great pomp, by the clergy of the 
quarter, and borne to the treasury of the church of Saint Op- 
portune, where the sacristan, even as late as 1789, earned a 
tolerably handsome revenue out of the great miracle of the 
Statue of the Virgin at the corner of the Eue Mauconseil, 
which had, by its mere presence, on the mémorable night be- 
tween the sixth and seventh of January, 1482, exorcised the 
defunct Eustache Moubon, who, in order to play a trick on 
the devil, had at his death maliciously concealed his soûl in 
his straw pallet. 




CHAPTER VI. 

THE BROKEN JÜG. 

After having run for some time at tlie top of his speed, 
without knowing whither, knocking liis liead agaiiist many a 
Street corner, leaping many a gutter, traversing many an alley, 
many a court, many a square, seeking flight and passage through 
ail the meanderings of tlie ancient passages of the Halles, ex- 
ploring in his panic terror what the fine Latin of the maps 
calls tota vîa, cheminum et viaria, onr poet suddenly halted 
for lack of breath in the first place, and in the second, because 
he had been collared, after a fashion, by a dilemma which 
had just occurred to his mind. ^^It strikes me. Master Pierre 
Gringoire,^’ he said to himself, placing his finger to his brow, 
that yon are running like a madman. The little scamps are 
no less afraid of yon than yon are of them. It strikes me, 
I say, that yon heard the clatter of their wooden shoes 
fleeing southward, while yon were fleeing northward. Now, 
one of two things, either they hâve taken flight, and the 
pallet, which they must hâve forgotten in their terror, is pre- 
cisely that hospitable bed in search of which yon hâve been 
running ever since morning, and which madame the Virgin 
miraculously sends yon, in order to recompense yon for having 
made a morality in her honor, accompanied by triumphs and 
mummeries ; or the children hâve not taken flight, and in that 
case they hâve put the brand to the pallet, and that is pre- 
cisely the good fire which y ou need to cheer, dry, and warm 

83 


84 


NOTBE-BAMK 


you. In either case, good fire or good bed, tbat straw pallet 
is a gift from heaven. The blessed Virgin Marie who stands 
at the corner of the Eue Mauconseil, could only hâve made 
Eustache Moubon die for that express purpose ; and it is folly 
on your part to flee thus zigzag, like a Picard before a Erench- 
man, leaving behind you what you seek before you ; and you 
are. a fool ! ” 

Then he retraced his steps, and feeling his way and search- 
ing, with his nose to the wind and his ears on the alert, he 
tried to find the blessed* pallet again, but in vain. There was 
nothing to be found but intersections of houses, closed courts, 
and crossings of streets, in the midst of which he hesitated 
and doubted incessantly, being more perplexed and entangled 
in this medley of streets than he would hâve been even in the 
labyrinth of the Hôtel des Tournelles. At length he lost 
patience, and exclaimed solemnly : Cursed be cross roads ! 
Tis the devil who has made them in the shape of his pitch- 
fork ! ’’ 

This exclamation afforded him a little solace, and a sort of 
reddish refiection which he caught sight of at that moment, at 
the extremity of a long and narrow lane, completed the éléva- 
tion of his moral tone. God be praised ! '' said he, '' There 
it is yonder ! There is my pallet burning.’’ And comparing 
himself to the pilot who suffers shipwreck by night, Salve, 
he added piously, salve, maris Stella ! 

. Did he address this fragment of litany to the Holy Virgin, 
or to the pallet ? We are utterly unable to say. 

He had taken but a few steps in the long Street, which 
sloped downwards, was unpaved, and more and more muddy 
and steep, when he noticed a very singular thing. It was 
not deserted ; here and there along its extent crawled certain 
vague and formless masses, ail directing their course towards 
the light which flickered at the end of the Street, like those 
heavy insects which drag along by night, from blade to blade 
of grass, towards the shepherd’s fire. 

Hothing renders one so adventurous as not being able to 
feel the place where one’s pocket is situated. Gringoire con- 
tinued to advance, and had soon joined that one of the forms 


THE BliOKEN JUG. 


85 


which dragged along most indolently, beliiiid the others. On 
drawing near, he perceived that it was nothing else than a 
wretched legless cripple in a bowl, who was hopping along on 
bis two bands like a wounded field-spider wbicb bas but two 
legs left. At tbe moment wben be passed close to tbis spe- 
cies of spider witb a buman countenance, it raised towards 
bim a lamentable voice : “ La buona manda, signor ! la huona 
manda ! * 

Deuce take you/’ said Gringoire/’ and me witb you, if I 
know wbat you mean ! 

And be passed on. 

He overtook another of tbese itinérant masses, and ex- 
amined it. It was an impotent man, both balt and crippled, 
and balt and crippled to sucb a degree tbat tbe complicated 
System of crutcbes and wooden legs wbicb sustained bim, gave 
bim tbe air of a mason’s scaffolding on tbe marcb. Gringoire, 
wbo liked noble and classical comparisons, compared bim in 
tbougbt to tbe living tripod of .Vulcan. 

Tbis living tripod saluted bim as be passed, but stopping 
bis bat on a level witb Gringoire’s cbin, like a shaving disb, 
wbile be sbouted in tbe latter’s ears : Senor cahellero, para 

comprar un pedaso de pan / f 

It appears,’’ said Gringoire, ‘Hbat tbis one can also talk ; 
but ’tis a rude language, and be is more fortunate tban I if 
be understands it.’^ Tben, smiting bis brow, in a sudden 
transition of ideas : “ By tbe way, wbat tbe deuce did tbey 

mean tbis morning witb tbeir Esmeralda ? 

He was minded to augment bis pace, but for tbe tbird time 
sometbing barred bis way. Tbis sometbing or, ratber, some 
one was a blind man, a little blind fellow witb a bearded, 
Jewisb face, wbo, rowirig away in tbe space about bim witb a 
stick, and towed by a large dog, droned througb bis nose witb 
a Hungarian accent : Fadtote caritatem ! 

Well, now,” said Gringoire, “ bere^s one at last wbo speaks 
a Christian tongue. I must bave a very charitable aspect, 
since tbey ask alins of me in tbe présent lean condition of my 
purse. My friend,’^ and be turned towards tbe blind man, 
* Alms. t Give me tbe means to buy a bit of bread, sir. 


86 


NOTBE-DAME. 


“ I sold my last sliirt last week ; that is to say, since y ou 
understand only the language of Cicero : Vendidi hebdoinade 
nuper transita meam ultimam chemisamJ^ 

That said, lie turned his back upon the blind man, and pur- 
sued his way. But the blind inan began to increase his stride 
at the same time ; and, behold ! the cripple and the legless 
man, in his bowl, came up on their side in great haste, and 
with great clamor of bowl and crutches, upon the pavement. 
Then ail three, jostling each other at poor Gringoire’s heels, 
began to sing their song to him, — 

Caritatem ! ” chanted the blind man. 

La huona manda chanted the cripple in the bowl. 

And the lame man took up the musical phrase by repeating : 

Un pedaso de pan ! 

Gringoire stopped up his ears. Oh, tower of Babel ! ’’ he 
exclainied. 

He set out to run. The blind man ran ! The lame man 
ran ! The cripple in the bowl ran ! 

And then, in proportion as he plunged deeper into the 
Street, cripples in bowls, blind men and lame nien, swarmed 
about him, and men with one arm, and with one eye, and the 
leprous with their sores, some emerging from little streets 
adjacent, some from the air-holes of cellars, howling, bellow- 
ing, yelping, ail limping and halting, ail flinging themselves 
towards the light, and humped up in the mire, like snails after 
a shower. 

Gringoire, still followed by his three persecutors, and not 
knowing very well what was to become of him, marched along 
in terror among them, turning out for the lame, stepping over 
the cripples in bowls, with his feet imbedded in that ant-hill 
of lame men, like the English captain who got caught in the 
quicksand of a swarm of crabs. 

The idea occurred to him of making an effort to retrace his 
steps. But it was too late. This whole légion had closed in 
behind him, and his three beggars held him fast. So he pro- 
ceeded, impelled both by this irrésistible fiood, by fear, and 
by a vertigo which converted ail this into a sort of horrible 
dream. 


THE BROKEN JUG. 


87 


At last he reached the end of the Street. It opened upon 
an immense place, where a thousand scattered lights flick- 
ered in the confused mists of night. Gringore flew thither, 
hoping to escape, by the swiftness of his legs, from the three 
infirm spectres who had clutched him. 

“ Onde vas, lioinhre ? ” (Where are you going, my man ?) 
cried the cripple, flinging away his crutches, and running after 
him with the best legs that ever traced a geometrical step upon 
the pavements of Paris. 

In the meantime the legless man, erect upon his feet, 
crowned Gringoire with his heavy iron bowl, and the blind 
man glared in his face with flaming eyes ! 

‘‘ Where am I ? said the terrified poet. 

In the Court of Miracles,’^ replied a fourth spectre, who 
had accosted them. 

Upon my soûl,” resumed Gringoire, I certainly do 
behold the blind who see, and the lame who walk, but where 
is the Saviour ? ” 

They replied by a burst of sinister laughter. 

The poor poet cast his eyes about him. It was, in truth, 
that redoubtable Cour des Miracles, whither an honest man 
had never penetrated at such an hour ; the magic circle where 
the ofïicers of the Châtelet and the sergeants of the provost- 
ship, who ventured thither, disappeared in morsels ; a city of 
thieves, a hideous wart on the face of Paris ; a sewer, from 
which escaped every morning, and whither returned every 
night to crouch, that stream of vices, of mendicancy and 
vagabondage which always overflows in the streets of capi- 
tals ; a monstrous hive, to which returned at nightfall, with 
their booty, ail the drones of the social order ; a lying hospi- 
tal where the bohemian, the disfrocked monk, the ruined 
scholar, the ne’er-do-wells of ail nations, Spaniards, Italians, 
Germans, — of ail religions, Jews, Christians, Mahometans, 
iddlaters, covered with painted sores, beggars by day, were 
transformed by night into brigands; an immense dressing- 
room, in a word, where, at that epoch, the actors of that 
eternal comedy, which theft, prostitution, and murder play 
upon the pavements of Paris, dressed and undressed. 


88 


NOTRE-DAME. 


It was a vast place, irregiilar and badly paved, like ail tlie 
squares of Paris at tliat date. Pires, around which swarined 
strange groups, blazed here and there. Every one was goin 
Corning, and shouting. Shrill laugliter was to be heard, tlie 
wailing of children, the voices of woinen. The hands and 
heads of this throng, black against the luminous background, 
outliiied against it a thousand eccentric gestures. At times, 
upon the ground, where trembled the light of the tires, 
iningled with large, indefinite shadows, one could behold a dog 
passing, which reseinbled a man, a inan who resembled a dog. 
The liinits of races and species seemed effaced in this city, as 
in a pandémonium. Men, women, beasts, âge, sex, health, 
maladies, ail seemed to be in common among these people ; 
ail went together, they iningled, confounded, superposed ; 
each one there participated in ail. 

The poor and fiickering fiâmes of the tire permitted Grin- 
goire to distinguish, amid his trouble, ail around the immense 
place, a hideous frame of ancient houses, whose wormeaten, 
shrivelled, stunted façades, each pierced with one or two 
lighted attic Windows, seemed to him, in the darkness, like 
enormous heads of old women, ranged in a circle, monstrous 
and crabbed, winking as they looked on at the AVitches’ Sab- 
bath. 

It was like a new world, unknown, unheard of, misshapen, 
creeping, swarming, faut as tic. 

Gringoire, more and more terrified, clutched by the three 
beggars as by three pairs of tongs, dazed by a throng of other 
faces which frothed and yelped around him, unhappy Grin- 
goire endeavored to summon his presence of mind, in order 
to recall whether it was a Saturday. But his efforts were 
vain ; the thread of his memory and of his thought was 
broken ; and, doubting everything, wavering between what he 
saw and what he felt, he put to himself this unanswerable 
question, — 

If I exist, does this exist ? if this exists, do I exist ? ’’ 

At that moment, a distinct cry arose in the buzzing throng 
which surrounded him, Let’s take him to the king ! let’s 
take him to the king ! ” 


THE BROKEN JUG. 


89 


Holy Virgin ! murmured Gringoire, the king here 
inust be a ram ? ” 

“ To the king ! to the king ! ” repeated ail voices. 

They dragged hiin off. Each vied with the other in laying 

is claws npon hiin. But the three beggars did not loose their 

jld and tore him froin the rest, howling, He belongs to 

LS?’’ 

The poet’s already sickly doublet yielded its last sigh in 
this struggle. 

While traversing the horrible place, his vertigo vanished. 
After taking a few steps, the sentiment of reality returned to 
him. He began to become accustomed to the atmosphère of 
the place. At the first moment there had arisen from his 
poet’s head, or, simply and prosaically, from his empty 
stomach, a mist, a vapor, so to speak, which, spreading 
between objects and himself, permitted him to catch a glimpse 
of them only in the incohérent fog of nightmare, — in those 
shadows of dreams which distort every outline, agglomerating 
objects into unwieldy groups, dilating things into chimeras, 
and men into phantoms. Little by little, this hallucination 
was succeeded by a less bewildered and exaggerating view. 
Reality made its way to the light around him, struck his eyes, 
struck his feet, and demolished, bit by bit, ail that frightful 
poetry with which he had, at first, believed himself to be 
surrounded. He was forced to perçoive that he was not 
walking in the Styx, but in mud, that he was elbowed not by 
démons, but by thieves ; that it was not his soûl which was 
in question, but his life (since he lacked that precious con- 
ciliator, which places itself so effectually between the bandit 
and the honest man — a purse). In short, on examining the 
orgy more closely, and with more coolness, he fell from the 
witches’ sabbath to the dram-shop. 

The Cour des Miracles was, in fact, merely a dram-shop ; 
but a brigand’s dram-shop, reddened quite as much with blood 
as with wine. 

The spectacle which presented itself to his eyes, when his 
ragged escort finally deposited him at the end of his trip, was 
not fitted to bear him back to poetry, even to the poetry of 


90 


NOTRE-DAME. 


hell. It was more than ever the prosaic and brutal reality of 
the tavern. Were we not in the lifteentli century, we would 
say that Gringoire had descended from Michael Angelo to 
Callot. 

Around a great lire wliicli burned on a large, circular flag- 
stone, the fiâmes of which had heated red-hot the legs of a 
tripod, which was empty for the moment, some wormeaten 
tables were placed, here and there, haphazard, no lackey of a 
geometrical turn having deigned to adjust their parallelism, 
or to see to it that they did not make too iinusual angles. 
Upon these tables gleamed several dripping pots of wine and 
beer, and round these pots were grouped many bacchic vis- 
ages, purple with the lire and the wine. There was a man 
with a huge belly and a jovial face, noisily kissing a woman 
of the town, thickset and brawny. There was a sort of sham 
soldier, a “ naquois,’’ as the slang expression runs, who was 
whistling as he undid the bandages from his fictitious wound, 
and removing the numbness from his sound and vigorous 
knee, which had been swathed since morning in a thousand 
ligatures. On the other hand, there was a wretched fellow, 
preparing with celandine and beef’s blood, his “ leg of God,’’ 
for the next day. Two tables further on, a palmer, with his 
pilgrim’s costume complété, was practising the lament of the 
Holy Queen, not forgetting the drone and the nasal drawl. 
Further on, a young scamp was taking a lesson in epilepsy 
from an old pretender, who was instructing him in the art of 
foaming at the mouth, by chewing a morsel of soap. Beside 
him, a man with the dropsy was getting rid of his swelling, 
and making four or five female thieves, who were disputing 
at the same table, over a child who had been stolen that even- 
ing, hold their noses. Ail circumstances which, two centuries 
later, seemed so ridiculous to the court,” as Sauvai says, 
“ that they served as a pastime to the king, and as an intro- 
duction to the royal ballet of Night, divided into four parts 
and danced on the theatre of the Petit-Bourbon.” “ Kever,” 
adds an eye witness of 1653, hâve the sudden métamor- 
phosés of the Court of Miracles been more happily presented. 
Benserade prepared us for it by some very gallant verses.” 


THE BROKEN JUG. 


91 


Loud laughter everywhere, and obscene songs. Eacb one 
held his own course, carping and swearing, without listening 
to his neighbor. Pots clinked, and quarrels sprang up at 
the shock of the pots, and the broken pots made rents in the 
rags. 

A big dog, seated on his tail, gazed at the fire. Soine chil- 
dren were mingled in this orgy. The stolen child wept and 
cried. Another, a big boy four years of âge, seated with 
legs dangling, upon a bench that was too high for hiin, before 
a table that reached to his chin, and uttering not a word. A 
third, gravely spreading ont upon the table with his fînger, 
the melted tallow which dripped from a candie. Last of ail, 
a little fellow crouching in the mud, almost lost in a caldron, 
which he was scraping with a tile, and from which he was 
evoking a Sound that would hâve made Stradivarius swoon. 

bTear the fire was a hogshead, and on the hogshead a beggar. 
This was the king on his throne. 

The three who had Gringoire in their clutches led him in 
front of this hogshead, and the entire bacchanal rout fell 
silent for a moment, with the exception of the cauldron 
inhabited by the child. 

Gringoire dared neither breathe nor raise his eyes. 

‘‘ Hombre, quita tu sombrero ! ” said one of the three 
knaves, in whose grasp he was, and, before he had compre- 
hended the meaning, the other had snatched his hat — a 
wretched headgear, it is true, but still good on a sunny day or 
when there was but little rain. Gringoire sighed. 

Meanwhile the king addressed him, from the summit of his 
cask, — 

Who is this rogne ? ” 

Gringoire shuddered. That voice, although accentuated by 
menace, recalled to him another voice, which, that very morn- 
ing, had dealt the deathblow to his mystery, by drawling, 
nasally, in the midst of the audience, Charity, please ! ” 
He raised his head. It was indeed Clopin Trouillefou. 

Clopin Trouillefou, arrayed in his royal insignia, wore 
neither one rag more nor one rag less. The sore upon his 
arm had already disappeared. He held in his hand one of 


92 


NOTBE-BAME, 


those whips made of thongs of white leather, which police 
sergeants then used to repress the crowd, and which were 
called boullayes. On his head he wore a sort of headgear, 
bound round and closed at the top. But it was difficult to 
inake out whether it was a child’s cap or a king’s crown, the 
two things bore so strong a resemblance to each other. 

Meanwhile Gringoire, without knowing why, had regained 
some hope, on recognizing in the King of the Cour des Mira- 
cles his accursed inendicant of the Grand Hall. 

Master/^ stammered he ; monseigneur — sire — how 
ought I to address you ? he said at length, having reached 
the culminating point of his crescendo, and knowing neither 
how to mount higher, nor to descend again. 

^^Monseigneur, his majesty, or comrade, call me what you 
please. But make haste. What hâve you to say in your own 
defence ? 

In your own defence? thought Gringoire, ^Ghat dis- 
pleases me.’’ He resumed, stuttering, am he, who this 
morning — ” 

By the devil’s claws ! ” interrupted Clopin, your name, 
knave, and nothing more. List en. You are in the presence 
of three powerful sovereigns : myself, Clopin Trouillefou, 
King of Thunes, successor to the Grand Coësre, suprême 
suzerain of the Bealm of Argot ; Mathias Hunyadi Spicali, 
Duke of Egypt and of Bohemia, the old yellow fellow whom 
you see yonder, with a dish clout round his head ; Guillaume 
Eousseau, Emperor of Galilee, that fat fellow who is not lis- 
tening to us but caressing a wench. We are your judges. 
You hâve entered the Kingdom of Argot, without being an 
argotier ; you hâve violât ed the privilèges of our city. You 
must be punished unless you are a capon, a franc-mitou or a 
rifodé ; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks, — a thief, 
a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort ? 
Justify y ourself ; announce your titles.” 

Alas ! ” said Gringoire, I hâve not that honor. I am the 
author — ” 

^^That is sufficient,” resumed Trouillefou, without permit- 
ting him to finish. ^^You are going to be hanged. ’Tis a 


THE BROKEN JUG. 


93 


vcry simple matter, gentlemen and honest bourgeois ! as you 
treat our people in your abode, so we treat you in ours ! The 
law which you apply to vagabonds, vagabonds apply to you. 
’Tis your fault if it is harsh. One really must behold the 
grimace of an honest man above the hempen collar now and 
then ; that renders the thing honorable. Corne, friend, divide 
your rags gayly among these damsels. I am going to hâve 
you hanged to amuse the vagabonds, and you are to give them 
your purse to drink your health. If you hâve any mummery 
to go through with, there’s a very good God the Father in that 
mortar yonder, in stone, which we stole from Saint-Pierre aux 
Boeufs. You hâve four minutes in which to fling your soûl at 
his head.’’ 

The harangue was formidable. 

“Well said, upon my soûl! Clopin Trouillefou preaches 
like the Holy Father the Pope ! ” exclaimed the Ernperor of 
Galilee, smashing his pot in order to prop up his table. 

Messeigneurs, emperors, and kings,’^ said Gringoire coolly 
(for I know not how, firmness had returned to him, and he 
spoke with resolution), “ don’t think of such a thing ; my 
name is Pierre Gringoire. I am the poet whose morality was 
presented this morning in the grand hall of the Courts.” 

Ah ! so it was you, master ! ” said Clopin. I was there, 
par la tête Dieu! Well ! comrade, is that any reason, be- 
cause you bored us to death this morning, that you should not 
be hung this evening ? ” 

I shall find difficulty in getting out of it,” said Gringoire 
to himself. ISTevertheless, he made one more effort : don’t 

see why poets are not classed with vagabonds,” said he. 

Vagabond, Æsopus certainly was ; Homerus was a beggar ; 
Mercurius was a thief — ” 

Clopin interrupted him : I believe that you are trying to 
blarney us with your jargon. Zounds ! let yourseif be hung, 
and don’t kick up such a row over it ! ” 

Pardon me, monseigneur, the King of Thunes,” replied 
Gringoire, disputing the ground foot by foot. “It is worth 
trouble — One moment! — Listen to me — You are not going 
to condemn me without having heard me ” — 


94 


NOTRE-DAME, 


His unlucky voice was, in fact, drowned in the uproar whicli 
rose around Mm. The little boy scraped away at his cauldron 
with more spirit than ever ; and, to crown ail, an old woman 
had just placed on the tripod a frying-pan of grease, which 
hissed away on the lire with a noise similar to the cry of a 
troop of children in pnrsuit of a masker. 

In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou appeared to hold a 
moinentary conférence with the Duke of Egypt, and the 
Emperor of Galilee, who was completely drnnk. Then he 
shouted shrilly : Silence ! ’’ and, as the cauldron and the 
frying-pan did not heed him, and continue d their duet, he 
juinped down from his hogshead, gave a kick to the boiler, 
which rolled ten paces away bearing the child with it, a kick 
to the frying-pan, which upset in the lire with ail its grease, 
and gravely remounted his throne, without troubling himself 
about the stifled tears of the child, or the grumbling of the 
old woman, whose supper was wasting away in a fine white 
flame. 

Trouillefou made a sign, and the duke, the emperor, and 
the passed masters of pickpockets, and the isolated robbers, 
came and ranged themselves around him in a horseshoe, of 
which Gringoire, still roughly held by the body, formed the 
centre. It was a semicircle of rags, tatters, tinsel, pitchforks, 
axes, legs staggering with intoxication, huge, bare arms, faces 
sordid, dull, and stupid. In the midst of this Round Table of 
beggary, Clopin Trouillefou, — as the doge of this senate, as 
the king of this peerage, as the pope of this conclave, — 
dominated ; first by virtue of the height of his hogshead, and 
next by virtue of an indescribable, haughty, fierce, and formid- 
able air, which caused his eyes to flash, and corrected in his 
savage profile the bestial type of the race of vagabonds. One 
would hâve pronounced him a boar amid a herd of swine. 

^^Listen,’’ said he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin 
with his horny hand ; don’t see why you should not be 
hung. It is true that it appears to be répugnant to you ; and 
it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it. 
You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After ail, 
we don’t wish you any harm. Here is a ineans of extricating 


THE BHOKEN JUG. % 

yourself from your predicament for the moment. Will you 
become one of us ? 

The reader can judge'' of the effect which this proposition 
produced upon Gringoire, who beheld life slipping away from 
him, and who was beginning to lose his hold upon it. He 
clutched at it again with energy. 

Certainly I will, and right heartily,’’ said he. 

^‘Do you consent,’’ resumed Clopin, ^^to enroll yourself 
among the people of the knife ? ” 

Of the knife, precisely,” responded Gringoire. 

^^You recognize yourself as a niember of the free bour- 
geoisie ? * added the King of Thunes. 

^^Of the free bourgeoisie.’^ 

Subject of the Kingdom of Argot ? ” . 

“ Of the Kingdom of Argot.” t 
A vagabond ? ” 

‘^A vagabond.” 

In your soûl ? ” 

^^In my soûl.” 

^‘1 must call your attention to the fact,” continued the 
king, that you will be hung ail the same.” 

“ The devil ! ” said the poet. 

^^Only,” continued Clopin imperturbably, you will be hung 
later on, with more ceremony, at the expense of the good city 
of Paris, on a handsome stone gibbet, and by honest men. 
That is a consolation.” 

Just so,” responded Gringoire. 

There are other advantages. In your quality of a high- 
toned sharper, you will not hâve to pay the taxes on mud, or 
the poor, or lanterns, to which the bourgeois of Paris are 
subject.” 

“So be it,” said the poet. “I agréé. I am a vagabond, a 
thief, a sharper, a man of the knife, anything you please; and 
I am ail that already, monsieur, King of Thunes, for I am a 
philosopher ; et omnia in philosophia, omnes in philosopho con- 
tinentur, — ail things are contained in philosophy, ail men in 
the philosopher, as you know.” 

* A high-toned sharper. 


t Thieves. 


96 


NOTRE-DAME, 


The King of Thunes scowled. 

What do you take me for, my friend ? What Hungarian 
Jew patter are you jabbering at us ? I don’t know Hebrew. 
One isn’t a Jew because one is a bandit. I don’t even steal 
any longer. Fm above that; I kill. Cut-throat, yes; cut- 
purse, no.” 

Oringoire tried to slip in some excuse between these curt 
words, which wrath rendered more and more jerky. 

I ask your pardon, monseigneur. It is not Hebrew ; Tis 
Latin.” 

tell you,” resumed Clopin angrily, ^^that Fm not a Jew, 
and that ITl hâve you hung, belly of the synagogue, like that 
little shopkeeper of Judea, who is by your side, and whom I 
entertain strong hopes of seeing nailed to a counter one of 
these days, like the counterfeit coin that he is ! ” 

So saying, he pointed his finger at the little, bearded Hun- 
garian J ew who had accosted Gringoire with his facitote cari- 
tatem, and who, understanding no other language beheld with 
surprise the King of Thunes’s ill-humor overflow upon him. 

At length Monsieur Clopin calmed down. 

So you will be a vagabond, you knave ? ” he said to our 
poet. 

Of course,” replied the poet. 

^^Willing is not ail,” said the surly Clopin; ^^good will 
doesnT put one onion the more into the soup, and Tis good 
for nothing except to go to Paradise with ; now, Paradise and 
the thieves’ band are two différent things. In order to be 
received among the thieves,* you must prove that you are 
good for something, and for that purpose, you must search the 
manikin.” 

l’il search anything you like,” said Gringoire. 

Clopin made a sign. Several thieves detached themselves 
from the circle, and returned a moment later. They brought 
two thick posts, terminated at their lower extremities in 
spreading timber supports, which made them stand readily 
upon the ground; to the upper extremity of the two posts 
they fitted a cross-beam, and the whole constituted a very 
* L’argot. 


THE BEOKEN JUG. 


97 


pretty portable gibbet, which Gringoire had the satisfaction of 
bebolding rise before him, in a twinkling. Nothing was lacking, 
not even the rope, which swung gracefully over the cross-beam. 

What are they going to do ? ’’ Gringoire asked himself 
with some nneasiness. A sound of bells, which he heard at 
that moment, put an end to his anxiety ; it was a stuffed 
manikin, which the vagabonds were suspending by the neck 
from the rope, a sort of scarecrow dressed in red, and so 
hung with mule-bells and larger bells, that one might hâve 
tricked ont thirty Castillan mules with them. These thousand 
tiny bells quivered for some time with the vibration of the 
rope, then gradually died away, and finally became silent 
when the manikin had been brought into a state of immobility 
by that law of the pendulum which has dethroned the water 
dock and the hour-glass. 

Then Clopin, pointing out to Gringoire a rickety old stool 
placed beneath the manikin, — 

Climb up there.’’ 

^^Deathof the devil ! objected Gringoire; shall break 
my neck. Your stool limps like one of Martiaks distiches ; 
it has one hexameter leg and one pentameter leg.’’ 

Climb ! ” repeated Clopin. 

Gringoire mounted the stool, and succeeded, not without 
some oscillations of head and arms, in regaining his centre of 
gravity. 

^‘Now,’’ went on the King of Thunes, ^Hwist your right 
foot round your left leg, and rise on the tip of your left foot.’’ 

“Monseigneur,’’ said Gringoire, “Ao you absolutely insist 
on my breaking some one of my limbs ? ” 

Clopin tossed his head. 

“ Hark ye, my friend, you talk too much. Here’s the gist 
of the matter in two words : you are to rise on tiptoe, as I 
tell you ; in that way you will be able to reach the pocket of 
the manikin, you will rummage it, you will pull out the purse 
that is there, — and if you do ail this without our hearing 
the Sound of a bell, ail is well : you shall be a vagabond. 
Ail we shall then hâve to do, will be to thrash you soundly 
for the space of a week.” 


98 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Ventre-Dieu! I will be careful,” said Griiigoire. ^^And 
suppose I do make the bells Sound ? ’’ 

Then you will be hanged. Do you understand ? 

“ I don’t understand at ail,” replied Gringoire. 

^^Listen, once more. You are to search the manikin, and 
take away its purse ; if a single bell stirs during the opera- 
tion, you will be hung. Do you understand that ? ” 

“ Good,” said Gringoire ; I understand that. And then ? ” 
If you succeed in removing the purse without our hearing 
the bells, you are a vagabond, and you will be thrashed for 
eight consecutive days. You understand now, no doubt ? ” 
No, monseigneur ; I no longer understand. Where is the ad- 
advantage to me ? hanged in one case, cudgelled in the other ? ” 
And a vagabond,” resumed Clopin, “ and a vagabond ; is 
that nothing ? It is for your interest that we should beat 
you, in order to harden you to blows.” 

Many thanks,” replied the poet. 

Corne, make haste,” said the king, stamping upon his 
cask, which resounded like a huge drum ! Search the mani- 
kin, and let there be an end to this ! I warn you for the last 
time, that if I hear a single bell, you will take the place of 
the manikin.” 

The band of thieves applauded Clopin’s words, and arranged 
themselves in a circle round the gibbet, with a laugh so piti- 
less that Gringoire perceived that he amused them too much 
not to hâve everything to fear from them. No hope was 
left for him, accordingly, unless it were the slight chance 
of succeeding in the formidable operation which was imposed 
upon him ; he decided to risk it, but it was not without first 
having addressed a fervent, prayer to the manikin he was 
about to plunder, and who would bave been easier to move 
to pity than the vagabonds. These myriad bells, with their 
little copper tongues, seemed to him like the mouths of so 
many asps, open and ready to sting and to hiss. 

Oh ! ” he said, in a very low voice, is it possible that my 
life dépends on the .slightest vibration of the least of these 
bells ? Oh ! ” he added, with clasped hands, bells, do not 
ring, hand-bells do not clang, mule-bells do not quiver ! ” 


THE BROKEN JUG. 


99 


He made one more attempt upon Trouillefou. 

And if there should corne a gust of wind ? ” 

You will be hanged/’ replied the other, without hésitation. 

Perceiving that no respite, nor reprie ve, nor subterfuge was 
possible, he bravely decided upon his course of action; he 
wound his right foot round his left leg, raised himself on his 
left foot, and stretched ont his arm : but at the moment 
when his hand touched the manikin, his body, which was now 
supported upon one leg only, wavered on the stool which had 
but three ; he made an involuntary effort to support himself 
by the manikin, lost his balance, and fell heavily to the 
ground, deafened by the fatal vibration of the thousand bells 
of the manikin, which, yielding to the impulse imparted by 
his hand, described first a rotary motion, and then swayed 
majestically between the two posts. 

IMalediction ! ’’ he cried as he fell, and remained as though 
dead, with his face to the earth. 

Meanwhile, he heard the dreadful peal above his head, the 
diabolical laughter of the vagabonds, and the voice of Trouil- 
lefou saying, — 

Fick me up that knave, and hang him without ceremony.” 

He rose. They had already detached the manikin to make 
room for him. 

The thieves made him mount the stool, Clopin came to him, 
passed the rope about his neck, and, tapping him on the 
shoulder, — 

Adieu, my friend. You can’t escape now, even if y ou 
digested with the pope’s guts.’’ 

The Word Mercy ! died away upon Gringoire’s lips. He 
cast his eyes about him; but there was no hope: ail were 
laughing. 

^^Bellevigne de TEtoile,’’ said the King of Thunes to an 
enormous vagabond, who stepped out from the ranks, climb 
upon the cross beam.” 

Bellevigne de l’Etoile nimbly mounted the transverse beâm, 
and in another minute, Gringoire, on raising his eyes, beheld 
him, with terror, seated upon the beam above his head. 

^^Now,” resumed Clopin Trouillefou, ^^as soon as I clap my 


100 


NOTUE-BAME. 


hands, you, Andry the Eed, will fling the stool to the ground 
witli a blow of your knee ; you, François Chant e-Prime, will 
cling to the feet of the rascal ; and you, Bellevigne, will liing 
yourself on his shoulders ; and ail three at once, do you 
hear ? ’’ 

Gringoire shuddered. 

Are you ready ? said Clopin Trouillefou to the three 
thieves, who held themselves in readiness to fall upon Grin- 
goire. A moment of horrible suspense ensued for the poor 
victim, during which Clopin tranquilly thrust into the lire 
with the tip of his foot, some bits of vine shoots which the 
flame had not caught. Are you ready ? ’’ he repeated, and 
opened his hands to clap. One second more and ail would 
hâve been over. 

But he paused, as though struck by a sudden thought. 

“ One moment ! ’’ said he ; “I forgot ! It is our custom not 
to hang a man without inquiring whether there is any woman 
who wants him. Comrade, this is your last resource. You 
must wed either a female vagabond or the noose.” 

This law of the vagabonds, singular as it may strike the 
reader, remains to-day written ont at length, in ancient Eng- 
lish legislatipn. {See Buringtorûs Observations.) 

Gringoire breathed again. This was the second time that 
he had returned to life within an hour. So he did not dare 
to trust to it too implicitly. 

Holà ! ” cried Clopin, mounted once more upon his cask, 
^^holà! women, females, is there among you, from the sor- 
ceress to her cat, a wench who wants this rascal ? Holà, Co- 
lette la Charonne ! Elisabeth Trouvain ! Simone Jodouyne ! 
Marie Piédebou ! Thonne la Longue ! Bérarde Fanouel ! Mi- 
chelle Genaille ! Claude Eonge-oreille ! Mathurine Girorou ! — 
Holà ! Isabeau-la-Thierrye ! Corne and see ! A man for notE 
ing ! Who wants him ? ’’ 

Gringoire, no doubt, was not very appetizing in this miséra- 
ble’ condition. The female vagabonds did not seem to be 
much affected by the proposition. The unhappy wretch 
heard them answer : No ! no ! hang him ; there’ll be the more 
fun for us ail ! 


THE BlîGKEN JÜQ. 


loi 


Kevertheless, three emerged from the throng and came to 
smell of hiin. The first was a big wench, with a square face. 
Slie examined the philosopher’s déplorable doublet attentively. 
His garmeut was worn, and more fiill of holes than a stove for 
roasting chestnuts. The girl made a wry face. “ Old rag ! ” she 
muttered, and addressing Gringoire, Let’s see your cloak ! ” 
“ I hâve lost it,” replied Gringoire. Your hat ? ” “ They took 
it away from me.’’ ‘‘Your shoes ? ” “They hâve hardly any 
soles left.” “Your purse ? ” “ Alas ! ” stammered Gringoire, “ I 
hâve not even a sou.” “ Let them hang you, then, and say ‘ Thank 
y ou ! ’ ” retorted the vagabond wench, turning her back on him. 

The second, — old, black, wrinkled, hideous, with an ugliness 
conspicuous even in the Cour des Miracles, trotted round Grin- 
goire. He almost trembled lest she should want him. But she 
mumbled between her teeth, “ He’s too thin,” and went ofî. 

The third was a young girl, quite fresh, and not too ugly. 
“ Save me ! ” said the poor fellow to her, in a low tone. She 
gazed at him for a moment with an air of pity, then dropped 
her eyes, made a plait in her petticoat, and remained in indé- 
cision. He followed ail these movements with his eyes; it 
was thelast gleam of hope. “No,” said the young girl, at 
length, “no! Guillaume Longuejoue would beat me.” She 
retreated into the crowd. 

“ You are unlucky, comrade,” said Clopin. 

Then rising to his feet, upon his hogshead. “ No one wants 
him,” he exclaimed, imitating the accent of an auctioneer, to 
the great delight of ail; “no one wants him? once, twice, 
three times ! ” and, turning towards the gibbet with a sign of 
his hand, “ Gone ! 

Bellevigne de l’Étoile, Andry the Eed, François Chante- 
Prune, stepped up to Gringoire. 

At that moment a cry arose among the thieves : “ La Es- 
meralda ! La Esmeralda ! ” 

Gringoire shuddered, and turned towards the side whence 
the clamor proceeded. 

The crowd opened, and gave passage to a pure and dazzling 
form. 

It was the gypsy. 


102 


NOTBE-DAME. 


Esmeralda ! ” said Gringoire, stupelied in the midst of 
his émotions, by the abrupt nianner in which that magic word 
knotted together ail his réminiscences of the day. 

This rare créature seemed, even in the Cour des Miracles, 
to exercise her sway of charm and beauty. The vagabonds, 
male and female, ranged themselves gently along her path, and 
their brutal faces beamed beneath her glance. 

She approached the victim with her light step. Her pretty 
Djali followed her. Gringoire was more dead than alive. She 
examined him for a moment in silence. 

^^You are going to hang this man?’’ she said gravely, to 
Clopin. 

Yes, sister,’^ replied the King of Thunes, ^^unless you will 
take him for your husband.’’ 

She made her pretty little pont with her under lip. 

“ l’il take him,^^ said she. 

Gringoire firinly believed that he had been in a dream ever 
since morning, and that this was the continuation of it. 

The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. 

They undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the 
stool. His émotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down. 

The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without 
uttering a Word. The gypsy offered it to Gringoire : Fling 
it on the ground,’^ said she. 

The crock broke into four pièces. 

Brother,’’ then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands 
upon their foreheads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your 
husband for four years. Go.’^ 




CHAPTER VII. 

A BRIDAL NIGHT. 

A FEW moments later our poet found himself in a tiny 
arched chamber, very cosy, very warm, seated at a table 
which appeared to ask nothing better than to make some loans 
from a larder hanging near by, having a good bed in prospect, 
and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked of 
enchantment He began serioiisly to take himself for a per- 
sdnage in a fairy taie ; he cast his eyes about him from time 
to time to time, as though to see if the chariot of lire, har- 
nessed to two-winged chimeras, which alone could hâve so 
rapidly transported him from Tartarus to Paradise, were still 
there. At times, also, he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the 
holes in his doublet, in order to cling to reality, and not lose 
the ground from under his feet completely. His reason, 
tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this 
thread. 

The young girl did not appear to pay any attention to him ; 
she went and came, displaced a stool, talked to her goat, and 
indulged in a pout now and then. At last she came and 
seated herself near the table, and Gringoire was able to 
scrutinize her at his ease. 

You hâve been a child, reader, and y ou would, perhaps, be 
very happy to be one still. It is quite certain that you hâve 
not, more than once (and for my part, I hâve passed whole 
days, the best employed of my life, at it) followed from 

103 


104 


NOTBE-BAME. 


thicket to thicket, by the side of running water, on a sunny 
day, a beautiful green or blue dragon-fly, breaking its flight 
in abrupt angles, and kissing the tips of ail the branches. 
You recollect with what amorous curiosity your thought and 
your gaze were riveted upon this little whirlwind, hissing 
and humming with wings of purple and azuré, in the midst 
of which floated an imperceptible body, veiled by the very 
rapidity of its movement. The aerial being which was diinly 
outlined amid this quivering of wings, appeared to you chi- 
inerical, imaginary, impossible to touch, impossible to see. 
But when, at length, the dragon-fly alighted on the tip of a 
reed, and, holding your breath the while, you were able to ex- 
amine the long, gauze wings, the long enamel robe, the two 
globes of crystal, what astonishment you felt, and what fear 
lest you should again behold the form disappear -into a shade, 
and the créature into a chimera ! Becall these impressions, 
and you will readily appreciate what Gringoire felt on con- 
templating, beneath her visible and palpable form, that Esmer- 
alda of whom, up to that time, he had only caught a glimpse, 
amidst a whirlwind of dance, song, and tumult. 

Sinking deeper and deeper into his revery : So this,” 

he said to himself, following her vaguely with his eyes, ^Gs 
la Esmeralda ! a celestial créature ! a Street dancer ! so much, 
and so little ! ^Twas she who dealt the death-blow to my 
mystery this morning, ’tis she who saves my life this even- 
ing ! My evil genius ? My good angel ! A pretty woman, 
on my word ! and who must needs love me madly to hâve 
taken me in that fashion By the way,” said he, rising sud- 
denly, with that sentiment of the true which formed the 
foundation of his character and his philosophy, I don’t know 
very well how it happens, but I am her husband ! ” 

With this idea in his head and in his eyes, he stepped up to 
the young girl in a manner so military and so gallant that she 
drew back. 

What do you want of me ? ” said she. 

“ Can you ask me, adorable Esmeralda ? ’ ^ replied Gringoire, 
with so passionate an accent that he was himself astonished 
at it on hearing himself speak. 


A BBIBAL NIGHT. 


105 

The gypsy opened her great eyes. don’t know what 
y ou mean/^ 

What ! ” resumed Gringoire, growing warmer and warmer, 
and supposing that, after ail, he had to deal merely with a 
virtue of the Cour des Miracles ; am I not thine, sweet friend, 
art thou not mine ? ” 

And, quite ingenuously, he clasped her waist. 

The gypsy’s corsage slipped through his hands like the skin 
of an eel. She bounded from one end of the tiny room to the 
other, stooped down, and raised herself again, with a little 
poniard in her hand, before Gringoire had even had tiine to 
see whence the poniard came ; proud and angry, with swell- 
ing lips and inflated nostrils, her cheeks as red as an api 
apple,* and her eyes darting lightnings. At the same time, 
the white goat placed itself in front of her, and presented to 
Gringoire a hostile front, bristling with two pretty horns, 
gilded and very sharp. Ail this took place in the twinkling 
of an eye. 

The dragon-fly had turned into a wasp, and asked nothing 
better than to sting. 

Our philosopher was speechless, and turned his astonished 
eyes from the goat to the young girl. Holy Virgin ! ” he 
said at last, when surprise permitted him to speak, here are 
two hearty dames ! ” 

The gypsy broke the silence on her side. 

You must be a very bold knave ! ” 

Pardon, mademoiselle,’^ said Gringoire, with a smile. But 
why did you take me for your husband ? ” 

Should I hâve allowed you to be hanged ? ” 

So,” said the poet, somewhat disappointed in his amorous 
hopes. You had no other idea in marrying me than to save 
me from the gibbet ? ” 

And what other idea did you suppose that I had ? ” 

Gringoire bit his lips. Corne,” said he, ‘‘ I am not yet so 
triumphant in Cupido, as I thought. But then, what was the 
good of breaking that poor jug ?” 

* A small dessert apple, bright red on one side and greenish-white on 
the other. 


106 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Meanwhile Esmeralda’s dagger and the goat’s horns were 
still upon the défensive. 

‘‘ Mademoiselle Esmeralda,” said the poet, let us corne to 
terms. I am not a clerk of the court, and I shall not go to 
law with you for thus carrying a dagger in Paris, in the teeth 
of the ordinances and prohibitions of M. the Provost. JSTever- 
theless, you are not ignorant of the fact that Noël Lescrivain 
was condemned, a week ago, to pay ten Parisian sous, for 
having carried a cutlass. But this is no affair of mine, and I 
will corne to the point. I swear to you, upon my share of Para- 
dise, not to approach you without your leave and permission, 
but do give me some supper. 

The truth is, Gringoire was, like M. Despreaux, “ not very 
voluptuous.” He did not belong to that chevalier and mus- 
keteer species, who take young girls by assault. In the matter 
of love, as in ail other affairs, he willingly assented to tem- 
porizing and adjusting terms ; and a good supper, and an amia- 
ble tête-à-tête appeared to him, especially when he was hungry, 
an excellent interlude between the prologue and the catas- 
trophe of a love adventure. 

The gypsy did not reply. She made lier disdainful little 
grimace, drew up lier head like a bird, then burst ont laugh- 
ing, and the tiny poniard disappeared as it had corne, without 
Gringoire being able to see where the wasp concealed its sting. 

A moment later, there stood upon the table a loaf of rye 
bread, a slice of bacon, some wrinkled apples and a jug of 
beer. Gringoire began to eat eagerly. One would hâve said, 
to hear the furious clashing of his iron fork and his earthen- 
ware plate, that ail his love had turned to appetite. 

The young girl seated opposite him, watched him in silence, 
visibly preoccupied with another thought, at which she smiled 
from time to time, while her soft hand caressed the intelligent 
head of the goat, gently pressed between her knees. 

A candie of yellow wax illuminated this scene of voracity 
and revery. 

Meanwhile, the first cravings of his stomach having been 
stilled, Gringoire felt some false shame at perceiving that 
nothing remained but one apple. 


A BBIDAL NIGHT. 


107 


“ You do not eat, Mademoiselle Esmeralda ? ” 

She replied by a négative sign of the head, and her pensive 
glance fixed itself upon the vault of the ceiling. 

What the deuce is she thinking of ? ” thought Gringoire, 
staring at what she was gazing at ; ‘‘ ’tis impossible that it can 
be that stone dwarf carved in the keystone of that arch, which 
thus absorbs her attention. What the deuce ! I can bear the 
comparison ! ” 

He raised his voice, Mademoiselle ! ’’ 

She seemed not to hear him. 

He repeated, still more loudly, Mademoiselle Esmeralda ! ” 

Trouble wasted. The young girl’s mind was elsewhere, and 
Gringoire’s voice had not the power to recall it. Eortunately, 
the goat interfered. She began to pull her mistress gently 
by the sleeve. 

“ What dost thou want, Di ali ? ” said the gypsy, hastily, 
as though suddenly awakened. 

“ She is hungry,” said Gringoire, charmed to enter into con- 
versation. Esmeralda began to crumble some bread, which 
Djali ate gracefully from the hollow of her hand. 

Moreover, Gringoire did not give her time to résumé her 
revery. He hazarded a délicate question. 

So you don’t want me for your husband ? ” 

The young girl looked at him intently, and said, "No.” 

For your lover ? ” went on Gringoire. 

She pouted, and replied, “ No ” 

For your friend ? ” pursued Gringoire. 

She gazed fixedly at him again, and said, after a momentary 
reflection, Perhaps.” 

This perhaps,” so dear to philosophers, emboldened Grip 
goire. 

“Do you know what friendship is ? ” he asked 

“ Yes,” replied the gypsy ; “ it is to be brother and sister ; twd 
soûls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand. 

“ And love ? ” pursued Gringoire. ^ 

“ Oh ! love ! ” said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye 
beamed. “ That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a 
woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.” 


108 


NOTBE-DAME. 


The Street dancer had a beauty as she spoke thus, that 
struck Gringoire singularly, and seemed to him in perfect 
keeping with the almost oriental exaltation of her words. 
Her pure, red lips half smiled ; her serene and candid brow 
became troubled, at intervals, under her thoughts, like a inirror 
iinder the breath ; and from beneath her long, drooping, black 
eyelashes, there escaped a sort of ineffable light, which gave 
to her profile that idéal serenity which Raphaël found at 
the inystic point of intersection of virginity, maternity, and 
divinity. 

Nevertheless, Gringoire continued, — 

“ What must one be then, in order to please you ? 

A man.” 

^‘And I — said he, ^^what, then, am I.” 

“ A man has a hemlet on his head, a sword in his hand, and 
golden spurs on his heels/’ 

^^Good,” said Gringoire, “without a horse, no man. Do 
you love any one ? 

As a lover ? — ” 

“ Yes.” 

She remained thoughtful for a moment, then said with a 
peculiar expression : That I shall know soon.” 

Why not this evening ? resumed the poet tenderly. 

Why not me ? 

She cast a grave glance upon him and said, — 

I can never love a man who cannot protect me.’’ 

Gringoire colored, and took the hint. It was évident that 
the young girl was alluding to the slight assistance which he 
had rendered her in the critical situation in which she had 
found herself two hours previously. This memory, effaced by 
his own adventures of the evening, now recurred to him. He 
smote his brow. 

By the way, mademoiselle, I ought to hâve begun there. 
Pardon my foolish absence of mind. How did you contrive 
to escape from the claws of Quasimodo ? ” 

This question made the gypsy shudder. 

Oh ! the horrible hunchback,” said she, hiding her face in 
her hands. And she shuddered as though with violent cold. 


A BBIDAL NIGHT, 109 

Horrible, in truth,’’ said Gringoire, wbo clung to bis idea j 

but bow did you manage to escape bim ? ’’ 

La Esmeralda smiled, sigbed, and remained silent. 

Do you know wby be followed you,’’ began Gringoire 
again, seeking to return to bis question by a circuitous route. 

“ I don’t know,” said tbe young girl, and she added bastily, 
“But you were following me also, wby were you following 
me ? ” 

“ In good faitb,” responded Gringoire, “ I don’t know 
eitber.” 

Silence ensued. Gringoire slashed tbe table witb bis knife. 
The young girl smiled and seemed to be gazing tbrougb tbe 
wall at sometbing. Ail at once sbe began to sing in a barely 
articulate voice, — 

Quando las pintadas aves, 

Mudas estai!, y la tierra — * 

Sbe broke off abruptly, and began to caress Djali. 

“ That’s a pretty animal of yours,” said Gringoire. 

“ Sbe ic5' my sister,” she answered. 

“ Wby are you called la Esmeralda ? ” asked tbe poet. 

“ I do not know.” 

“But wby ?” 

Sbe drew from ber bosom a sort of little oblong bag, sus- 
pended from ber neck by a string of adrézaracb beads. Tbis 
bag exhaled a strong odor of campbor. It was covered witb 
green silk, and bore in its centre a large piece of green glass, 
in imitation of an emerald. 

“ Perbaps it is because of tbis,” said sbe. 

Gringoire was on tbe point of taking tbe bag in bis hand. 
Sbe drew back. 

“ Don’t toucb it ! It is an amulet. You would injure tbe 
charm, or tbe charm would injure you.” 

The poet’s curiosity was more and more aroused. 

“ Wbo gave it to you ? ” 

Sbe laid one finger on ber moutb and concealed tbe amulet 


* When the gay-plumaged birds grow weary, and the earth — 


110 


NOTEE-BAME. 


in her bosom. He tried a few more questions, but sbe hardly 
replied. 

Wliat is the meaning of tbe words, la Esmeralda ? ’’ 

“ I don’t know,” said she. 

To wliat language do they belong ? ” 

They are Egyptian, I think/’ 

‘^1 suspected as much/^ said Gringoire, ^^you are not a 
native of France ? ’’ 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ Are your parents alive ? ” 

She began to sing, to an ancient air, — 

Mon père est oiseau, 

Ma mère est oiselle. 

Je passe l’eau sans nacelle, 

Je passe l’eau sans bateau, 

Ma mère est oiselle, ^ 

Mon père est oiseau.* 

^^Good,” said Gringoire. what âge did y ou corne to 

France ? 

‘‘ When I was very yoiing.’’ 

And when to Paris ? ” 

Last year. At the moment when we Avere entering the 
papal gâte I saw a reed Avarbler fût through the air, that Avas 
at the end of Augnst ; I said, it Avill be a hard Avinter.” 

So it was,” said Gringoire, delighted at this beginning of 
a conversation. ‘‘1 passed it in bloAving my fingers. So 
you hâve the gift of prophecy ? ” 

She retired into her laconics again. 

^^No.” 

Is that rnaii whom you call the Duke of Egypt, the chief 
of your tribe ? ” 

''Yes.” 

But it was he who married us,” remarked the poet timidly. 
She made her customary pretty grimace. 

I don’t even knoAV your naine.” 

* My fatlier is a bird, my mother is a bird. I cross the water witliout 
a barque, I cross the water without a boat. My mother is a bird, my 
fatlier is a bird. 


A BRIDAL N IG HT. lH 

My name ? If you want it, here it is, — Pierre Grin- 
goire.” 

“ I know a prettier one/’ said she. 

“Naughty girl ! ” retorted the poet. “Never mind, you shall 
not provoke me. Wait, perhaps you will love me more when 
you know me better ; and then, you hâve told me your story 
with so much confidence, that I owe you a little of mine. You 
must know, then, that my name is Pierre Gringoire, and that 
I am a son of the farmer of the notary’s office of Gonesse. 
My father was hung by the Burgundians, and my mother dis- 
embowelled by the Picards, at the siégé of Paris, twenty years 
ago. At six years of âge, therefore, I was an orphan, without 
a sole to my foot except the pavements of Paris. I do not 
know how I passed the interval from six to sixteen. A fruit 
dealer gave me a plum here, a baker fiung me a crust there ; 
in the evening I got myself taken up by the watch, who threw 
me into prison, and there I found a bundle of straw. Ail this 
did not prevent my growing up and growing thin, as you see. 
In the winter I warmed myself in the sun, under the porch of 
the Hôtel de Sens, and I thought it very ridiculous that the 
lire on Saint John’s Day was reserved for the dog days. At 
sixteen, I wished to choose a calling. I tried ail in succession. 
I becanie a soldier ; but I was not brave enough. I became a 
monk ; but I was not sufficiently devout ; and then l’m a bad 
hand at drinking. In despair, I became an apprentice of the 
woodcutters, but I was not strong enough; I had more of 
an inclination to become a schoolmaster ; ^tis true that I did 
not know how to read, but that’s no reason. I perceived at 
the end of a certain time, that I lacked something in every 
direction ; and seeing that I was good for nothing, of my own 
free will I became a poet and rhymester. That is a trade 
which one can always adopt when one is a vagabond, and it’s 
better than stealing, as some young brigands of my acquaint- 
ance advised me to do. One day I met by luck, Dom Claude 
Frollo, the reverend archdeacon of Î^otre-Dame. He took an 
interest in me, and it is to him that I to-day owe it that I am a 
véritable man of letters, who knows Latin from the de Officiîs 
of Cicero to the mortuology of the Celestine Pathers, and a bar- 


112 


NOTRE-DAME. 


barian neither in scholastics, nor in politics, nor in rhythmics, 
that sophism of sophisms. I am the author of the Mystery 
which was presented to-day with great triumph and a great 
concourse of populace, in the grand hall of the Palais de Jus- 
tice. I hâve also made a book which will contain six hundred 
pages, on the wonderful cornet of 1465, which sent one man 
mad. I hâve enjoyed still other successes. Being somewhat 
of an artillery carpenter, I lent a hand to Jean Mangue’s great 
bombard, which burst, as you know, on the day when it was 
tested, on the Pont de Charenton, and killed four and twenty 
curions spectators. You see that I am not a bad match in 
marriage. I know a great many sorts of very engaging tricks, 
which I will teach your goat; for example, to mimic the 
Bishop of Paris, that cursed Pharisee whose mill wheels 
splash passers-by the whole length of the Pont aux Meuniers. 
And then my mystery will bring me in a great deal of coined 
money, if they will only pay me. And finally, I am at your 
orders, I and my wits, and my science and my letters, ready 
to live with you, dam sel, as it shall please you, chastely or 
joyously ; husband and wife, if you see fit ; brother and sister, 
if you think that better.” 

Gringoire ceased, awaiting the effect of his harangue on the 
young girl. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. 

Phœhus,^^ she said in a low voice. Then, turning towards 
the poet, Phœhus, — what does that mean ? ’’ 

Gringoire, without exactly understanding what the connec- 
tion could be between his address and this question, was not 
sorry to display his érudition. Assuming an air of importance, 
he replied, — 

It is a Latin word which means 

Sun ! she repeated. 

“ It is the nanie of a handsome archer, who was a god,” 
added Gringoire. 

A god ! ” repeated the gypsy, and there was something 
pensive and passionate in her tone. 

At that moment, one of her bracelets became unfastened 
and fell. Gringoire stooped quickly to pick it up ; when he 
straightened up, the young girl and the goat hâd disappeared. 


A BRIDAL NIGHT. 


113 


He heard the Sound of a boit. It was a little door, commu- 
nicating, no doubt, with a neighboring cell, whicb was being 
fastened on the outside. 

Has she left me a bed, at least ? said our philosopher. 

He made the tour of his cell. There was no piece of fur- 
niture adapted to sleeping purposes, except a tolerably long 
wooden coffer ; and its cover was carved, to boot ; which 
afforded Gringoire, when he stretched himself out upon it, a 
sensation soinewhat similar to that which Micromégas would 
feel if he were to lie down on the Alps. 

‘‘ Corne ! ’’ said he, adjusting himself as well as possible, I 
must resign myself. But here’s a strange nuptial night. ’Tis 
a pity. There was something innocent and antediluvian about 
that broken crock, which quite pleased me.” 




BOOK TH IRD. 


CHAPTER 1. 

NOTRE-DAME. 

The church. of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a 
majestic and sublime édifice. But, beautiful as it fias been 
preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax 
indignant, before the numberless dégradations and mutilations 
which time and men bave both caused the venerable monu- 
ment to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its 
first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last. 

On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the 
side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, 
homo edacior I should be glad to translate thus : time 
is blind, man is stupid. 

If we had leisure to examine with the reader, one by one, 
the divers traces of destruction imprinted upon the old 
church, time^s share would be the least, the share pf men the 
most, especially the men of art, since there hâve been individ- 
uals who assumed the title of architects during the last two 
centuries. 

And, in the first place, to cite only a few leading examples, 
there certainly are few finer architectural pages than this 
façade, where, successively and at once, the three portais 

* Time is a devourer ; man, more so. 

114 


NOTRE-DAME. 


115 


hollowed out in an arch; the broidered and dentated cor- 
don of the eight and twenty royal niches ; the immense cen- 
tral rose window, flanked by its two latéral Windows, like a 
priest by his deacon and subdeacon ; the frail and lofty gallery 
of trefoil arcades, which supports a heavy platform above its 
fine, slender colnmns ; and lastly, the two black and massive 
towers with their slate penthouses, harmonious . parts of a 
magnificent whole, superposedin five gigantic stories ; — develop 
themselves before the eye, in a mass and without confusion, 
with their innumerable details of statuary, carving, and sculpt- 
ure, joined powerfully to the tranquil grandeur of the whole ; 
a vast symphony in stone, so to speak ; the colossal work of 
one man and one people, ail together one and complex, like 
the Iliads and the Eomanceros, whose sister it is ; prodigious 
product of the grouping together of ail the forces of an epoch, 
where, upon each stone, one sees the fancy of the workman 
disciplined by the genius of the artist start forth in a hun- 
dred fashions ; a sort of human création, in a word, powerful 
and fecund as the divine création of which it seems to hâve 
stolen the double character, — variety, eternity. 

And what we here say of the façade must be said of the 
entire church ; and what we say of the cathédral church of 
Paris, must be said of ail the churches of Christendom in the 
Middle Ages. Ail things are in place in that art, self-created, 
logical, and well proportioned. To measure the great toe of 
the foot is to measure the giant. 

Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it still 
appears to us, when we go piously to admire the grave and 
puissant cathédral, which inspires terror, so its chronicles 
assert : quæ mole sua terrorem incutit spectantihus. 

Three important things are to-day lacking in that façade : 
in the first place, the staircase of eleven steps which formerly 
raised it above the soil ; next, the lower sériés of statues 
which occupied the niches of the three portais ; and lastly the 
upper sériés, of the twenty-eight most ancient kings of France, 
which garnished the gallery of the first story, beginning with 
Childebert, and ending Avith Phillip Augustus, holding in his 
hand “ the impérial apple.’^ 


116 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Time has caused the staircase to disappear, by raising the 
soil of the city with a slow and irrésistible progress; but. 
while thus causing the eleven steps which added to the majes- 
tic height of the édifice, to be devoured, one by one, by the 
rising tide of the pavements of Paris, — time has bestowed 
upon the church perhaps more than it has taken away, for it 
is time which has spread over the façade that sombre hue of 
the centuries which makes the old âge of monuments the 
period of their beauty. 

But who has thrown down the two rows of statues ? who 
has left the niches empty ? who has eut, in the very middle of 
the central portai, that new and bastard arch ? who has dared 
to frame therein that commonplace and heavy door of carved 
wood, à la Louis XV., beside the arabesques of Biscornette ? 
The men, the architects, the artists of our day. 

And if we enter the interior of the édifice, who has over- 
thrown that colossus of Saint Christopher, proverbial for 
magnitude among statues, as the grand hall of the Palais de 
Justice was among halls, as the spire of Strasbourg among 
spires ? And those myriads of statues, which peopled ail 
the spaces between the columns of the nave and the choir, 
kneeling, standing, equestrian, men, women, children, kings, 
bishops, gendarmes, in stone, in marble, in gold, in silver, in 
copper, in wax even, — who has brutally swept them away ? 
It is not time. 

And who substituted for the ancient gothic altar, splendidly 
encumbered with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble 
sarcophagus, with angels’ heads and clouds, which seenis a 
specimen pillaged from the Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides ? 
Who stupidly sealed that heavy anachronism of stone in the 
Carlo vingian pavement of Hercandus ? Was it not Louis 
XIV., fulfilling the request of Louis XIII. 

And who put the cold, white panes in the place of those 
Windows, high in color,’’ which caused the astonished eyes 
of our fathers to hesitate between the rose of the grand por- 
tai and the arches of the apse ? And what would a sub- 
chanter of the sixteenth century say, on beholding the beau- 
tiful yellow wash, with which our archiépiscopal vandals hâve 


NOTRE-DAME. 


117 


desmeared their cathédral ? He would remember that it 
was the color with which tbe hangman smeared accursed ’’ 
édifices ; lie would recall the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, ail 
smeared thus, on account of the constable’s treason. Yel- 
low, after ail, of so good a quality,’^ said Sauvai, ^‘and so 
well recommended, that more than a century has not yet 
caused it to lose its color.” He would think that the sacred 
place had become infamous, and would flee. 

And if we ascend the cathédral, without mentioning a thou- 
sand barbarisms of every sort, — what has become of that 
charming little bell tower, which rested upon the point of 
intersection of the cross-roofs, and which, no less frail and no 
less bold than its neighbor (also destroyed), the spire of the 
Sainte-Chapelle, buried itself in the sky, farther forward than 
the towers, slender, pointed, sonorous, carved in open work. 
An architect of good taste amputated it (1787), and consid- 
ered it sufïicient to mask the wound with that large, leaden 
plaster, which resembles a pot cover. 

”ris thus that the marvellous art of the Middle Ages has 
been treated in nearly every country, especially in France. 
One can distinguish on its ruins three sorts of lésions, ail 
three of which eut into it at different depths ; first, time, 
which has insensibly notched its surface here and there, and 
gnawed it every where; next, political and religions révolu- 
tions, which, blind and wrathful by nature, hâve flung them- 
selves tumultuously upon it, torn its rich garment of carving 
and sculpture, burst its rose Windows, broken its necklace of 
arabesques and tiny figures, torn out its statues, sometimes 
because of their mitres, sometimes because of their crowns ; 
lastly, fashions, even more grotesque and foolish, which, since 
the anarchical and splendid déviations of the Eenaissance, 
hâve followed each other in the necessary decadence of archi- 
tecture. Fashions hâve wrought more harm than révolutions. 
They hâve eut to the quick; they hâve attacked the very 
bone and framework of art; they hâve eut, slashed, disor- 
ganized, killed the édifice, in form as in the Symbol, in its 
consistency as well as in its beauty. And then they hâve 
made it over ; a presumption of which neither time nor revo- 


118 


NOTRE-DAME. 


lutions at least hâve been guilty. They hâve audaciously 
adjusted, in the naine of ^^good taste/’ upon the wonnds oi 
gothic architecture, their misérable gewgaws of a day, theii 
ribbons of marble, their pompons of métal, a véritable leprosy 
of egg-shaped ornaments, volutes, whorls, draperies, garlands, 
fringes, stone fiâmes, bronze clouds, pudgy cupids, chubby^ 
cheeked cherubim, which begin to devour the face of art in 
the oratory of Catherine de Medicis, and cause it to expire, 
two centuries later, tortured and grimacing, in the boudoir of 
the Dubarry. 

Thus, to sum up the points which we hâve just indicated, 
three sorts of ravages to-day disfigure Gothic architecture. 
Wrinkles and warts on the epidermis; this is the work of 
time. Deeds of violence, brutalities, contusions, fractures ; 
this is the work of the révolutions from Luther to Mirabeau. 
Mutilations, amputations, dislocation of the joints, restora- 
tions ; this is the Greek, Eoman, and barbarian work of pro- 
fessors according to Vitruvius and Yignole. This magnificent 
art produced by the Vandals has been slain by the academies. 
The centuries, the révolutions, which at least devastate with 
impartiality and grandeur, hâve been joined by a cloud of 
school architects, licensed, sworn, and bound by oath ; defac- 
ing with the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting 
the chicorées of Louis XV. for the Gothic lace, for the greater 
glory of the Parthenon. It is the kick of the ass at the 
dying lion. It is the old oak crowning itself, and which, 
to heap the measure full, is stung, bitten, and gnawed by 
caterpillars. 

How far it is from the epoch when Eobert Cenalis, compar- 
ing Notre Dame de Paris to the famous temple of Diana at 
Ephesus, so mucli lauded hy the ancient pagans, which Eros- 
tatus lias immortalized, found the Gallic temple more excel- 
lent in length, breadth, height, and structure.” * 

Notre-Dame is not, moreover, what can be called a com- 
plété, definite, classified monument. It is no longer a Eoman- 
esque church; nor is it a Gothic church. This édifice is 
not a type. Notre Dame de Paris has not, like the Abbey of 
* Histoire Gallicane, liv. II. Période III. fo. 130, p. 1. 


NOTIÎE-JDAME. 


119 


Tournus, the grave and massive frame, the large and round 
vault, tlie glacial bareness, the majestic simplicity of the 
édifices which hâve the rounded arch for their progenitor. It 
is not, like the Cathédral of Bourges, the magnificent, light, 
inultiform, tufted, bristling efilorescent product of the pointed 
arch. Impossible to class it in that ancient family of sombre, 
mysterious churches, low and crushed as it were by the round 
arch, almost Egyptian, with the exception of the ceiling ; ail 
hieroglyphics, ail sacerdotal, ail symbolical, more loaded in 
their ornaments, with lozenges and zigzags, than with flowers, 
with flowers than with animais, with animais than with men ; 
the Work of the architect less than of the bishop ; first trans- 
formation of art, ail impressed with théocratie and military 
discipline, taking root in the Lower Empire, and stopping 
with the tinie of William the Conqueror. Impossible to place 
our Cathédral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, 
rich in painted Windows and sculpture ; pointed in form, 
bold in attitude ; communal and bourgeois as political sym- 
bols ; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art ; second 
transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, im- 
movable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, 
which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with 
Louis IX. Notre Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, 
like the first ; nor of pure Arabian race, like the second. 

It is an édifice of the transition period. The Saxon archi- 
tect completed the érection of the first pillars of the nave, 
when the pointed arch, which dates from the Crusade, arrived 
and placed itself as a conqueror upon the large Romanesque 
capitals which should support only round arches. The pointed 
arch, mistress since that time, constructed the rest of the 
church. Nevertheless, timid and inexperienced at the start, 
it sweeps out, grows larger, restrains itself, and dares no 
longer dart upwards in spires and lancet Windows, as it did 
lacer on, in so many marvellous cathedrals. One would say 
that it were conscious of the vicinity of the heavy Roman- 
esque pillars. 

However, these édifices of the transition from the Roman- 
esque to the Gothic, are no less precious for study than the 


120 


NOTRE-DAME. 


pure types. They express a sliade of the art which would be 
lost without them. It is the graft of the pointed upon the 
round arch. 

Notre-Dame de Paris is, in particular, a curions specimen 
of this variety. Each face, each stone of the venerable mon- 
ument, is a page not only of the history of the country, but 
of the history of science and art as well. Thus, in order to 
indicate here only the principal details, while the little Ked 
Door almost attains to the limits of the Gothic delicacy 
of the fifteenth century, the pillars of the nave, by their 
size and weight, go back to the Carlo vingian Abbey of 
Saint-Germain des Prés. One would suppose that six centu- 
ries separated these pillars from that door. There is no one, 
not even the hermetics, who does not find in the symbols of 
the grand portai a satisfactory compendium of their science, 
of which the Church of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was 
so complété a hieroglyph. Thus, the Koman abbey, the phil- 
osophers’ church, the Gothic art. Saxon art, the heavy, round 
pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, 
with which Nicolas Plamel played the préludé to Luther, 
papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Prés, Saint-Jacques 
de la Boucherie, — ail are mingled, combined, amalgamated in 
Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the 
ancient churches of Paris, a sort of chimera ; it lias the head 
of one, the limbs of another, the haunches of another, some- 
thing of ail. 

We repeat it, these hybrid constructions are not the least 
interesting for the artist, for the antiquarian, for the historian. 
They make one feel to what a degree architecture is a primi- 
tive thing, by demonstrating (what is also demonstrated by 
the cyclopean vestiges, the pyramids of Egypt, the gigantic 
Hindoo pagodas) that the greatest products of architecture 
are less the works of individuals than of society ; rather the 
offspring of a nation’s effort, than the inspired flash of a man 
of genius; the deposit left by a whole people ; the heaps 
accumulated by centuries ; the residue of successive évapora- 
tions of human society, — in a Word, species of formations. 
Each wave of time contributes its alluvium, each race de- 


NOTBE-DAME. 


121 


posits its layer on the monument, each individual brings his 
stone. Tbus do the beavers, tbus do the bees, tbus do men. 
The great Symbol of architecture, Babel, is a hive. 

Great édifices, like great mountains, are the work of centu- 
ries. Art often undergoes a transformation while they are 
pending, jpendent opéra interrupta ; they proceed quietly in 
accordance with the transformed art. The new art takes 
the monument where it finds it, incrusts itself there, assimi- 
lâtes it to itself, develops it according to its fancy, and fin- 
ishes it if it can. The thing is accomplished without trouble, 
without effort, without reaction, — folio wing a natural and 
tranquil law. It is a graft which shoots up, a sap which cir- 
culâtes, a végétation which starts forth anew. Certainly 
there is matter here for many large volumes, and often the 
universal history of humanity in the successive engrafting of 
many arts at many levels, upon the same monument. The 
man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great 
masses, which lack the name of their authorj human intel- 
ligence is there summed up and totalized. Time is the 
architect, the nation is the builder. 

Not to consider here anything except the Christian archi- 
tecture of Europe, that younger sister of the great masonries 
of the Orient, it appears to the eyes as an immense forma- 
tion divided into three well-defined zones, which are super- 
posed, the one upon the other : the Eomanesque zone,* the 
Gothic zone, the zone of the Eenaissance, which we would 
gladly call the Greco-Eoman zone. The Eoman layer, which 
is the most ancient and deepest, is occupied by the round 
arch, which reappears, supported by the Greek column, in 
the modem and upper layer of the Eenaissance. The pointed 

* This is the same which is called, according to locality, climate, and 
races, Lombard, Saxon, or Byzantine. There are four sister and parallel 
architectures, each having its spécial character, but derived from the 
same origin, the round arch. 

'^Faciès non omnibus una, 

Non diversa tamen, qualem, etc. 

Their faces not ail alike, nor yet different, but such as the faces of 
sisters ought to be. 


122 


NOTRE-DAME. 


arch is found between the two. Tlie édifices which belong 
exclusively to any one of these three layers are perfectly 
distinct, uniform, and complété. There is the Abbey of 
Jumiéges, there is the Cathédral of Reims, there is the 
Sainte-Croix of Orléans. But the three zones mingle and 
amalgamate along the edges, like the colors in the solar spec- 
trum. Hence, complex monuments, édifices of gradation and 
transition. One is Roman at the base, Gothic in the middle, 
Greco-Roman at the top. It is because it was six hundred 
years in building. This variety is rare. The donjon keep of 
d’Etampes is a specimen of it. But monuments of two for- 
mations are more frequent. There is Notre-Dame de Paris, a 
pointed-arch édifice, which is imbedded by its pillars in that 
Roman zone, in which are plunged the portai of Saint-Denis, 
and the nave of Saint-Germain des Prés. There is the charm- 
ing, half-Gothic chapter-house of Bocherville, where the 
Roman layer extends half way up. There is the cathédral of 
Rouen, which would be entirely Gothic if it did not bathe 
the tip of its central spire in the zone of the Renaissance."*^ 

However, ail these shades, ail these différences, do not 
affect the surfaces of édifices only. It is art which has 
changed its skin. The very constitution of the Christian 
church is not attacked by it. There is always the saine 
internai woodwork, the sanie logical arrangement of parts. 
Whatever may be the carved and embroidered envelope of a 
cathédral, one always finds beneath it — in the State of a 
germ, and of a rudiment at the least — the Roman basilica. 
It is eternally developed upon the soil according to the same 
law. There are, invariably, two naves, which intersect in a 
cross, and whose upper portion, rounded into an apse, forms 
the choir ; there are always the side aisles, for interior proces- 
sions, for chapels, — a sort of latéral walks or promenades 
where the principal nave discharges itself through the spaces 
between the pillars. That settled, the number of chapels, 
doors, bell towers, and pinnacles are modified to infinity, 
according to the fancy of the century, the people, and art. 

* This portion of the spire, which was of woodwork, is precisely that 
which was consumed by lightning, in 1823. 


NOTRE-DAME. 


123 


The service of religion once assured and provided for, archi- 
tecture does what she pleases. Statues, stained glass, rose 
Windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs, — 
she combines ail these imaginings according to the arrange- 
ment which best suits her. Hence, the prodigious exterior 
variety of these édifices, at whose foundation dwells so much 
order and unity. The trunk of a tree is immovable ; the 
foliage is capricious. 




CHAPTER II. 

A bird’s-eye view of paris. 

We hâve just attempted to restore, for the reader’s benefit, 
that admirable church of Notre-Dame de Paris. We hâve 
briefiy pointed ont the greater part of the beauties which it 
possessed in the fifteenth century, and which it lacks to-day ; 
but we hâve omitted the principal thing, — the view of Paris 
which was then to be obtained from the summits of its 
towers. 

That was, in fact, — when, after having long groped one’s 
way np the dark spiral which perpendicularly pierces the 
thick Wall of the belfries, one emerged, at last abruptly, upon 
one of the lofty platforms innndated with light and air, — 
that was, in fact, a fine picture which spread ont, on ail sides 
at once, before the eye; a spectacle sui generis, of which 
those of our readers who hâve had the good fortune to see a 
Gothic city entire, complété, homogeneous, — a few of which 
still remain, Nuremberg in Bavaria and Vittoria in Spain, — 
can readily form an idea ; or even smaller specimens, pro- 
vided that they are well preserved, — Vitré in Brittany, 
Nordhausen in Prussia. 

The Paris of three hundred and fifty years ago — the Paris 
of the fifteenth century — was already a gigantic city. We 
Parisians generally make a mistake as to the ground which 
we think that we hâve gained, since Paris has not increased 

124 


M BIIW^S-EYE VIEW OF PABIS, 


125 


much over one-third silice the time of Louis XI. It Las cer- 
tainly lost more in beauty than it has gained in size. 

Paris had its birth, as the reader knows, in that old island 
of the City which has the form of a cradle. The strand of 
that island was its first boundary wall, the Seine its first 
inoat. Paris reinained for inany centuries in its island state, 
with two bridges, one on the north, the other on the south; 
and two bridge heads, which were at the same time its 
gates and its fortresses, — the Grand-Châtelet on the right 
bank, the Petit-Châtelet on the left. Then, from the date of 
the kings of the first race, Paris, being too cribbed and con- 
fined in its island, and unable to return thither, crossed the 
water. Then, beyond the Grand, beyond the Petit-Châtelet, 
a first circle of walls and towers began to infringe upon the 
country on the two sides of the Seine. Some vestiges of this 
ancient enclosure still remained in the last century ; to-day, 
only the memory of it is left, and here and there a tradition, 
the Baudets or Baudoyer gâte, Porta Bagauda. 

Little by little, the tide of houses, always thrust from the 
heart of the city outwards, overflows, devours, wears away, 
and effaces this wall. Philip Augustus makes a new dike for 
it. He imprisons Paris in a circular chain of great towers, 
both lofty and solid. For the period of more than a century, 
the houses press upon each other, accuniulate, and raise their 
level in this basin, like water in a réservoir. They begin to 
deepen ; they pile story upon story ; they mount upon each 
other ; they gush forth at the top, like ail laterally com- 
pressed growth, and there is a rivalry as to which shall thrust 
its head above its neighbors, for the sake of getting a little 
air. The Street grows narrower and deeper, every space is 
overwhelmed and disappears. The houses finally leap the 
wall of Philip Augustus, and scatter joyfully over the plain, 
without order, and ail askew, like runaways. There they 
plant themselves squarely, eut themselves gardens from the 
fields, and take their ease. Beginning with 1367, the city 
spreads to such an extent into the suburbs, that a new wall 
becomes necessary, particularly on the right bank ; Charles V. 
builds it. But a city like Paris is perpetually growing. It is 


126 


NOTRE-DAME. 


only such cities that become capitals. They are funnels, into 
which ail the geographical, political, moral, and intellectual 
water-sheds of a country, ail the natural slopes of a people, 
pour ; Wells of civilizatioii, so to speak, and also sewers, where 
commerce, industry, intelligence, population, — ail that is sap, 
ail that is life, ail that is the soûl of a nation, filters and 
amasses unceasingly, drop by drop, century by century. 

So Charles V/s wall snffered the fate of that of Philip 
Augustus. At the end of the fifteenth century, the Faubourg 
strides across it, passes beyond it, and runs farther. In the 
sixteenth, it seems to retreat visibly, and to bury itself deeper 
and deeper in the old city, so thick had the new city already 
become outside of it. Thus, beginning with the fifteenth 
century, where our story finds us, Paris had already outgrown 
the three concentric circles of walls which, from the time of 
Julian the Apostate, existed, so to speak, in germ in the 
Grand-Châtelet and the Petit-Châtelet. The mighty city had 
cracked, in succession, its four enclosures of walls, like a 
child grown too large for his garments of last year. Under 
Louis XI., this sea of housës was seen to be pierced at in- 
tervals by several groups of ruined towers, from the ancient 
wall, like the summits of hills in an inundation, — like archi- 
pelagos of the old Paris snbmerged beneath the new. 

Since that time Paris lias undergone yet another transform- 
ation, nnfortunately for our eyes ; but it has passed only one 
more wall, that of Louis XV., that misérable wall of mud and 
spittle, worthy of the king who bnilt it, worthy of the poet 
who sung it, — 

Le mur murant Paris rend Paris murmurant.* 

In the fifteenth century, Paris was still divided into three 
wholly distinct and separate towns, each having its own phys- 
iognomy, its own specialty, its manners, customs, privilèges, 
and history : the City, the University, the Town. The City, 
which occupied the island, was the most ancient, the smallest, 
and the mother of the other two, crowded in between them 
* The wall walling Paris makes Paris murmur. 


A BIBB'S-EYE VIEW OF FAttlS. 


127 


like (may we be pardoned the comparison) a little old woman 
between two large and handsome maidens. The University 
covered the left bank of the Seine, froin the Tournelle to the 
Tour de Nesle, points which correspond in the Paris of to-day, 
the one to the wine market, the other to the mint. Its Avall 
included a large part of that plain where Julian had built his 
hot baths. The hill of Sainte-Geneviève was enclosed in it. 
The culminating point of this sweep of walls was the Papal 
gâte, that is to say, near the présent site of the Panthéon. 
The Town, which was the largest of the three fragments of 
Paris, held the right bank. Its quay, broken or interrupted 
in many places, ran along the Seine, from the Tour de Billy 
to the Tour du Bois ; that is to say, from the place where the 
granary stands to-day, to the présent site of the Tuileries. 
These four points, where the Seine intersected the wall of the 
capital, the Tournelle and the Tour de Nesle on the right, the 
Tour de Billy and the Tour du Bois on the left, were called 
pre-eminently, the four toivers of Paris. The Town encroached 
still more extensively upon the fields than the University. 
The culminating point of the Town wall (that of Charles V.) 
was at the gates of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, whose situ- 
ation has not been changed. 

As we hâve just said, each of these three great divisions of 
Paris was a town, but too spécial a town to be complété, a city 
which could not get along without the other two. Hence, three 
entirely distinct aspects : churches abounded in the City ; pal- 
aces, in the Town, and colleges, in the University. Neglect- 
ing here the originalities, of secondary importance in old Paris, 
and the capricious régulations regarding the public high- 
ways, we will say, froin a general point of view, taking only 
masses and the whole group, in this chaos of communal juris- 
dictions, that the island belonged to the bishop, the right 
bank to the provost of the merchants, the left bank to the 
Eector ; over ail ruled the provost of Paris, a royal not a mu- 
nicipal official. The City had Notre-Dame; the Town, the 
Louvre and the Hôtel de Ville ; the University, the Sorbonne. 
The Town had the markets (Halles) ; the city, the Hospital ; 
the University, the Pre-aux-Clercs. Offences committed by 


128 


NOTRE-J)AMË. 


the scholars on tlie left bank were tried in the law courts on 
tlie island, and were punished on the right bank at Montfau- 
con ; unless the rector, feeling the university to be stro.ng and 
the king weak, intervened ; for it was the students’ privilège 
to be hanged on their own grounds. 

The greater part of these privilèges, it may be noted in 
passing, and there were some even better than the above, had 
been extorted from the kings by revolts and mutinies. It is 
the course of things from time immémorial ; the king only 
lets go when the people tear away. There is an old charter 
which puts the matter naively : àpropos of fidelity : Civibus 
fidelitas in reges, qiiœ tamen aliquoties seditionibus interrupta, 
milita peperit privilégia. 

In the fifteenth century, the Seine bathed five islands within 
the walls of Paris : Louviers island, where there were then 
trees, and where there is no longer any thing but wood ; l’île 
aux Vaches, and Tile Notre Dame, both deserted, with the 
exception of one house, both fiefs of the bishop — in the 
seventeenth century, a single island was formed out of these 
two, which was built upon and named l’île Saint-Louis — , 
lastly the City, and at its point, the little islet of the cow 
tender, which was afterwards engulfed beneath the platform 
of the Pont-Neuf. The City then had five bridges : three on 
the right, the Pont Notre-Dame, and the Pont au Change, of 
stone, the Pont aux Meuniers, of wood ; two on the left, the 
Petit Pont, of stone, the Pont Saint-Michel, of wood ; ail 
loaded with houses. 

The University had six gates, built by Philip Augustus ; 
there were, beginning with la Tournelle, the Porte Saint- 
Victor, the Porte-Bordelle, the Porte Papale, the Porte Saint- 
Jacques, the Porte Saint-Michel, the Porte Saint-Germain. 
The Town had six gates, built by Charles V. ; beginning with 
the Tour de Billy they were : the Porte Saint- Antoine, the Port» 
du Temple, the Porte Saint-Martin, the Porte Saint-Denis, tlu 
Porte Montmartre, the Porte Saint-Honoré. Ail these gates 
were strong, and also handsome, which does not detract from 
strength. A large, deep moat, with a brisk current during 
the high water of winter, bathed the base of the wall round 


Â BIRD ’S-EYE VIEIV OF PARIS. 129 

Paris ; the Seine furnished the water. At night, tlie gates 
were slmt, the river was barred at both ends of the city with 
huge iron chains, and Paris slept tranqnilly. 

From a bird’s-eye view, these three burgs, the City, the 
Town, and the University, each presented to the eye an inex- 
tricable skein of eccentrically tangled streets. Nevertheless, 
at first sight, one recognized the fact that these three frag- 
ments formed but one body. One immediately perceived three 
long parallel streets, unbroken, undisturbed, traversing, almost 
in a straight line, ail three cities, from one end to the other ; 
from North to South, perpendicularly, to the Seine, which 
bound them together, mingled them, infused them in each 
other, poured and transfused the people incessantly, from one 
to the other, and made one ont of the three. The first of 
these streets ran from the Porte Saint-Martin : it was called 
the Pue Saint-Jacques in the University, Pue de la Juiverie in 
the City, Pue Saint Martin in the Town ; it crossed the water 
twice, under the name of the Petit Pont and the Pont Notre- 
Dame. The second, which was called the Pue de la Harpe on 
the left bank. Pue de la Barillerié in the island. Pue Saint 
Dennis on the right bank. Pont Saint-Michel on one arm of 
the Seine, Pont au Change on the other, ran from the Porte 
Saint-Michel in the University, to the Porte Saint-Denis in 
the Town. However, under ail these names, there were but 
two streets, parent streets, generating streets, — the two arte- 
ries of Paris. Ail the other veins of the triple city either 
derived their supply from them or emptied into them. 

Independently of these two principal streets, piercing Paris 
diametrically in its whole breadth, from side to side, common 
to the entire capital, the City and the University had also 
each its own great spécial Street, which ran lengthwise by 
them, parallel to the Seine, cutting, as it passed, at right 
angles, the two arterial thoroughfares. Thus, in the Town, 
one descended in a straight line from the Porte Saint- Antoine 
to the Porte Saint-Honoré; in the University from the Porte 
Saint-Victor to the Porte Saint-Germain. These two great 
thoroughfares intersected by the two first, formed the canvas 
upon which reposed, knotted and crowded together on every 


130 


NOTBE-BAME. 


hand, the labyrinthine network of the streets of Paris. In 
the incompréhensible plan of these streets, one distinguished 
likewise, on looking attentively, two clusters of great streets, 
like magnified sheaves of grain, one in the University, the 
other in the Town, which spread ont gradually from the 
bridges to the gates. 

Some traces of this geometrical plan still exist to-day. 

Now, what aspect did this whole présent, when, as viewed 
from the summit of the towers of Notre-Dame, in 1482 ? 
That we shall try to describe. 

Por the spectator who arrived, panting, upon that pinnacle, 
it was first a dazzling confusing view of roofs, chimneys, 
streets, bridges, places, spires, bell towers. Everything struck 
your eye at once : the carved gable, the pointed roof, the tur- 
rets suspended at the angles of the walls ; the stone pyramids 
of the eleventh century, the slate obelisks of the fifteenth ; the 
round, bare tower of the donjon keep ; the square and fretted 
tower of the church ; the great and the little, the massive and 
the aerial. The eye was, for a long time, wholly lost in this 
labyrinth, where there was nothing which did not possess its 
originality, its reason, its genius, its beauty, — nothing which 
did not proceed from art ; beginning with the smallest house, 
with its painted and carved front, with external beams, ellip- 
tical door, with projecting stories, to the royal Louvre, which 
then had a colonnade of towers. But these are the principal 
masses which were then to be distinguished when the eye 
began to accustom itself to this tumult of édifices. 

In the first place, the City. — The island of the City,’’ as 
Sauvai says, who, in spite of his confused medley, sometimes 
has such happy turns of expression, — the island of the city 
is made like a great ship, stuck in the mud and run aground 
in the current, near the centre of the Seine.” 

We hâve just explained that, in the fifteenth century, this 
ship was anchored to the two banks of the river by five 
bridges. This form of a ship had also struck the heraldic 
scribes ; for it is from that, and not from the siégé by the 
Normans, that the ship which blazons the old shield of Paris, 
cornes, according to Favyn and Pasquier. Por him who under- 


A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


131 


stands how to decipher them, armorial bearings are algebra, 
armorial bearings bave a longue. The whole history of the 
second half of the Middle Ages is written in armorial bear- 
ings, — the first half is in the symbolism of the Roman 
churches. They are the hieroglyphics of feudalism, succeed- 
ing those of theocracy. 

Thus the City first presented itself to the eye, with its stern 
to the east, and its prow to the west. Turning towards the 
prow, one had before one an innumerable flock of ancien! 
roofs, over which arched broadly the lead-covered apse of the 
Sainte-Chapelle, like an elephant’s haunches loaded with its 
tower. Only here, this tower was the most audacious, the 
most open, the most ornamented spire of cabinet-maker’s work 
that ever let the sky peep through its cône of lace. In front 
of hTotre-Dame, and very near at hand, three Street s opened 
into the cathédral square, — a fine square, lined with ancien! 
houses. Over the south side of this place bent the wrinkled 
and sullen façade of the Hôtel Dieu, and its roof, which seemed 
covered with warts and pustules. Then, on the right and the 
left, to east and west, within that wall of the City, which was 
yet so contracted, rose the bell towers of its one and twenty 
churches, of every date, of every form, of every size, from the 
low and wormeaten belfry of Saint-Denis du Pas (Carcer 
Glaucîni) to the slender needles of Saint-Pierre aux Bœufs 
and Saint-Landry. 

Behind Notre-Dame, the cloister and its Grothic galleries 
spread ont towards the north; on the south, the half-Roman 
palace of the bishop; on the east, the desert point of the 
Terrain. In this throng of houses the eye also distinguished, 
by the lofty open-work mitres of stone which then crowned 
the roof itself, even the most elevated Windows of the palace, 
the hôtel given by the city, under Charles VI., to Juvénal des 
XJrsins; a little farther on, the pitch-covered sheds of the 
Palus Market ; in still another quarter the new apse of Saint- 
Germain le Vieux, lengthened in 1458, with a bit of the Rue 
aux Pebves; and then, in places, a square crowded with 
people; a pülory, erected at the corner of a Street; a fine 
fragment of the pavement of Philip Augustus, a magnificent 


m 


kotre-bamr 


flagging, grooved for the horses’ feet, in the middle of the 
road, and so badly replaced in the sixteenth century by the 
misérable cobblestones, called the pavement of the League ; a 
deserted back courtyard, with one of those diaphanoiis stair- 
case turrets, such as were erected in the fifteenth century, one 
of which is still to be seen in the Rue des Bourdonnais. 
Lastly, at the right of the Sainte-Chapelle, towards the west, 
the Palais de Justice rested its group of towers at the edge 
of the water. The thickets of the king’s gardens, which 
covered the western point of the city, masked the Island du 
Passeur. As for the water, from the summit of the towers of 
Notre-Dame one liardly saw it, on either side of the City ; the 
Seine was hidden by bridges, the bridges by houses. 

And when the glance passed these bridges, whose roofs were 
visibly green, rendered mouldy before their time by the vapors 
from the water, if it was directed to the left, towards the 
University, the hrst édifice which struck it was a large, low 
sheaf of towers, the Petit-Châtelet, whose yawning gâte de- 
voured the end of the Petit-Pont. Then, if your view ran 
along the bank, from east to west, from the Tournelle to the 
Tour de Nesle, there was a long cordon of houses, with carved 
beams, stained-glass Windows, each story projecting over that 
beneath it, an interminable zigzag of bourgeois gables, fre- 
quently interrupted by the mouth of a Street, and from time 
to time also by the front or angle of a huge stone mansion, 
planted at its ease, with courts and gardens, wings and 
detached buildings, amid this populace of crowded and narrow 
houses, like a grand gentleman among a throng of rustics. 
There were five or six of these mansions on the quay, from the 
house of Lorraine, which shared with the Bernardins the 
grand enclosure adjoining the Tournelle, to the Hôtel de Nesle, 
whose principal tower ended Paris, and whose pointed roofs 
were in a position, during three months of the year, to 
encroach, with their black triangles, upon the scarlet disk of 
the setting sun. 

This side of the Seine was, however, the least mercantile of 
the two. Students furnished more of a crowd and more noise 
there than artisans, and there Avas not; properly speaking, any 


A BIBB^S-EYE VIEW OF PABIS. 


133 


quay, except from the Pont Saint-Michel to the Tour de 
Nesle. The rest of the bank of the Seine was now a naked 
strand, the same as beyond the Bernardins ; again, a throng 
of houses, standing with their feet in the water, as between 
the two bridges. 

There was a great uproar of laundresses ; they screamed, 
and talked, and sang from morning till night along the beach, 
and beat a great deal of linen there, just as in our day. This 
is not the least of the gayeties of Paris. 

The University presented a dense mass to the eye. From 
one end to the other, it was homogenequs and compact. The 
thousand roofs, dense, angular, clinging to each other, com- 
posed, nearly ail, of the same geometrical element, olîered, 
when viewed from above, the aspect of a crystallization of the 
same substance. 

The capricious ravine of streets did not eut this block of 
houses into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges 
were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were 
some everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these 
beautiful édifices were the product of the same art as the 
simple roofs which they overshot, and were, actually, only 
a multiplication of the square or the cube of the same 
geometrical figure. Hence they complicated the whole effect, 
without disturbing it; completed, without overloading it. 
Geometry is harmony. Some fine mansions here and there 
made magnificent outlines against the picturesque attics of 
the left bank. The house of Nevers, the house of Kome, the 
house of Reims, which hâve disappeared ; the hôtel de Cluny, 
which still exists, for the consolation of the artist, and whose 
tower was so stupidly deprived of its crown a few years ago. 
Close to Cluny, that Roman palace, with fine round arches, 
were once the hot baths of Julian. There were a great many 
abbeys, of a beauty more devout, of a grandeur more solemn 
than the mansions, but not less beautiful, not less grand. 
Those which first caught the eye were the Bernardins, with 
their three bell towers ; Sainte-Geneviève, whose square 
tower, which still exists, makes us regret the rest ; the Sor- 
bonne, half college, half monastery, of which so admirable a 


134 


NOTUE-BAME. 


nave survives ; the fine quadrilatéral cloister of tlie Mathu- 
rins ; its neighbor, the cloister of Saint-Benoît, within whose 
walls they hâve had tiine to cobble up a theatre, between the 
seventh and eighth éditions of this book ; the Cordeliers, with 
their three enormous adjacent gables; the Augustins, whose 
graceful spire formed, after the Tour de Nesle, the second 
denticulation on this side of Paris, starting from the west. 
The colleges, which are, in fact, the intermediate ring between 
the cloister and the world, hold the middle position in the 
monumental sériés between the hôtels and the abbeys, with a 
severity full of elegance, sculpture less giddy than the palaces, 
an architecture less severe than the convents. Unfortunately, 
hardly anything remains of these monuments, where Gothic 
art combined with so just a balance, richness and economy. 
The churches (and they were numerous and splendid in the 
University, and they were graded there also in ail the âges of 
architecture, from the round arches of Saint-Julian to the 
pointed arches of Saint-Së vérin), the churches dominated the 
whole ; and, like one harmony more in this mass of harmonies, 
they pierced in quick succession the multiple open work of 
the gables with slashed spires, with open-work bell towers, 
with slender pinnacles, whose line was also only a magnificent 
exaggeration of the acute angle of the roofs. 

The ground of the University was hilly ; Mount Sainte- 
Geneviève formed an enormous mound to the south ; and it 
was a sight to see from the summit of Notre-Dame how that 
throng of narrow and tortuous streets (to-day the Latin Quar- 
ter), those bunches of bouses which, spread out in every direc- 
tion from the top of this eminence, precipitated themselves in 
disorder, and almost perpendicularly down its flanks, nearly to 
the water’s edge, having the air, some of falling, others of 
clambering up again, and ail of holding to one another. A 
continuai flux of a thousand black points which passed each 
other on the pavements made everything move before the 
eyes ; it was the populace seen thus from aloft and afar. 

Lastly, in the intervals of these roofs, of these spires, of 
these accidents of numberless édifices, which bent and writhed, 
and jagged in so eccentric a manner the extreme line of the 


A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


135 


university, one caught a glimpse, here and there, of a great 
expanse of moss-grown wall, a thick, round tower, a crenellated 
city gâte, shadowing forth the fortress ; it was the wall of 
Philip Angiistns. Beyond, the fields gleained green ; beyond, 
fled the roads, along which were scattered a few more snburban 
houses, which became more infrequent as they became more dis- 
tant. Some of these faubourgs were important : there were, 
first, starting from la Tournelle, the Bourg Saint-Victor, with 
its one arch bridge over the Bièvre, its abbey where one could 
read the epitaph of Louis le Gros, epitaphium Ludovici Grossi, 
and its church with an octagonal spire, flanked with four little 
bell towers of the eleventh century (a similar one can be seen 
at Etampes ; it is not yet destroyed) j next, the Bourg Saint- 
Marceau, which already had three churches and one convent ; 
then, leaving the mill of the Gobelins and its four white walls 
on the left, there was the Faubourg Saint-Jacques with the 
beautiful carved cross in its square ; the church of Saint- 
Jacques du Haut-Pas, which was then Gothic, pointed, charm- 
ing; Saint-Magloire, a fine nave of the fourteenth century, 
which Napoléon turned into a hayloft ; Notre-Dame des 
Champs, where there were Byzantine mosaics; lastly, after 
having left behind, full in the country, the Monastery des 
Chartreux, a rich édifice contemporary with the Palais de Jus- 
tice, with its little garden divided into compartments, and the 
haunted ruins of Vauvert, the eye fell, to the west, upon the 
three Koman spires of Saint-Germain des Prés. The Bourg 
Saint-Germain, already a large community, formed fifteen or 
twenty streets in the rear ; the pointed bell tower of Saint- 
Sulpice marked one corner of the* town. Close beside it one 
descried the quadrilatéral enclosure of the fair of Saint- 
Germain, where the market is situated to-day; then the 
abboPs pillory, a pretty little round tower, well capped with 
a leaden cône ; the brickyard was further on, and the Eue du 
Four, which led to the common bakehouse, and the mill on its 
hillock, and the lazar house, a tiny house, isolated and half 
seen. 

But that which attracted the eye most of ail, and fixed it for 
a long time on that point, was the abbey itself. It is certain 


136 


NOTBE-JDAME. 


that this monastery, which had a grand air, both as a church and 
as a seignory ; that abbatial palace, where the bishops of Paris 
counted themselves happy if they could pass the night ; that 
refectory, iipon which the architect had bestowed the air, the 
beauty, and the rose window of a cathédral; that élégant 
chapel of the Virgin ; that monumental dormitory ; those vast 
gardens ; that portcullis ; that drawbridge ; that envelope of 
battlements which notched to the eye the verdure of the sur- 
rounding meadows ; those courtyards, where gleamed men at 
arms, intermingled with golden copes; — the whole grouped 
' and clustered about three lofty spires, with round arches, well 
planted upon a Gothic apse, made a magnificent figure against 
the horizon. 

When, at length, after having contemplated the üniversity 
for a long time, you turned towards the right bank, towards 
the Town, the character of the spectacle was abruptly altered. 
The Town, in fact much larger than the üniversity, was also 
less of a unit. At the first glance, one saw that it was divided 
into many masses, singularly distinct. First, to the eastward, 
in that part of the town which still takes its naine from the 
marsh where Camulogènes entangled Cæsar, was a pile of 
palaces. The block extended to the very water’s edge. Four 
almost contiguous hôtels, Jouy, Sens, Barbeau, the house of 
the Queen, mirrored their slate peaks, broken with slender 
turrets, in the Seine. 

These four édifices filled the space from the Eue des ISTonain- 
dières, to the abbey of the Celestins, whose spire gracefully 
relieved their line of gables and battlements. A few misérable, 
greenish hovels, hanging over the water in front of these 
sumptuous hôtels, did not prevent one from seeing the fine 
angles of their façades, their large, square Windows with 
stone mullions, their pointed porches overloaded with statues, 
the vivid outlines of their walls, always clear eut, and ail 
those charming accidents of architecture, which cause Gothic 
art to hâve the air of beginning its combinations afresh with 
every monument. 

Behind these palaces, extended in ail directions, now broken, 
fenced in, battlemented like a citadel, now veiled by great 


A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


137 


trees like a Carthusian convent, the immense and multiform 
enclosure of that miraculous Hôtel de Saint-Pol, where the 
King of France possessed the means of lodging snperbly two 
and twenty princes of the rank of the dauphin and the Duke 
of Burgundy, with their domestics and their suites, without 
counting the great lords, and the emperor when he came to 
view Paris, and the lions, who had their separate hôtel at the 
royal hôtel. Let us say here that a prince’s apartment was 
then composed of never less than eleven large rooms, from 
the chamber of state to the oratory, not to mentioîTthe gal- 
leries, baths, vapor-baths, and other superfluous places,’^ with 
which each apartment was provided ; not to mention the pri- 
vate gardens for each of the king’s guests; not to mention 
the kitchens, the cellars, the domestic offices, the general 
refectories of the house, the poultry-yards, where there were 
twenty-two general laboratories, from the bakehouses to the 
wine-cellars ; games of a thousand sorts, malls, tennis, and rid- 
ing at the ring ; aviaries, fishponds, ménageries, stables, barns, 
libraries, arsenals and foundries. This was what a king’s pal- 
ace, a Louvre, a Hôtel de Saint-Pol was then. A city within 
a city. 

From the tower where we are placed, the Hôtel Saint Pol, 
almost half hidden by the four great houses of which we hâve 
just spoken, was still very considérable and very marvellous 
to see. One could there distinguish, very well, though cleverly 
United with the principal building by long galleries, decked 
with painted glass and slender columns, the three hôtels which 
Charles V. had amalgamated with his palace : the Hôtel du 
Petit-Muce, with the airy balustrade, which formed a grace- 
ful border to its roof ; the hôtel of the Abbe de Saint-Maur, 
having the vanity of a stronghold, a great tower, machicola- 
tions, loopholes, iron gratings, and over the large Saxon door, 
the armorial bearings of the abbé, between the two mortises 
of the drawbridge ; the hôtel of the Comte d’ Etampes, whose 
donjon keep, ruined at its summit, was rounded and notched 
like a cock’s comb ; here and there, three or four ancient oaks, 
forming a tuft together like enormous cauliflowers ; gambols 
of swans, in the clear water of the fishponds, ail in folds of 


138 


NOTEE-DAME. 


light and shade ; many courtyards of which one beheld pictur- 
esque bits; the Hôtel of the Lions, with its low, pointed 
arches on short, Saxon pillars, its iron gratings and its per- 
pétuai roar ; shooting up above the whole, the scale-orna- 
mented spire of the Ave-Maria ; on the left, the house of 
the Provost of Paris, flanked by four sinall towers, delicately 
grooved, in the middle ; at the extreinity, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, 
properly speaking, with its multiplied façades, its successive 
enrichments from the time of Charles V., the hybrid excres- 
cences, with which the fancy of the architects had loaded it 
during the last two centuries, with ail the apses of its chapels, 
ail the gables of its galleries, a thousand weathercocks for the 
four winds, and its two lofty contiguous towers, whose conical 
roof, surrounded by battlements at its base, looked like those 
pointed caps which hâve their edges turned up. 

Continuing to mount the stories of this amphithéâtre of 
palaces spread out afar upon the ground, after Crossing a deep 
ravine hollowed out of the roofs in the Town, which marked 
the passage of the Eue Saint Antoine, the eye reached the 
house of Angoulême, a vast construction of many epochs, 
where there were perfectly new and very white parts,. which 
melted no better into the whole than a red patch on a blue 
doublet. Nevertheless, the remarkably pointed and lofty 
roof of the modem palace, bristling with carved eaves, cov- 
ered with sheets of lead, where coiled a thousand fantastic 
arabesques of sparkling incrustations of gilded bronze, that 
roof, so curiously damascened, darted upwards gracefully from 
the midst of the brown ruins of the ancient édifice ; whose 
huge and ancient towers, rounded by âge like casks, sinking 
together with old âge, and rending themselves from top to 
bottom, resembled great bellies unbuttoned. Behind rose the 
forest of spires of the Palais des Tournelles. Hot a view in 
the World, either at Chambord or at the Alhambra, is more 
magic, more aerial, more enchanting, than that thicket of 
spires, tiny bell towers, chimneys, weather-vanes, winding 
staircases, lanterns through which the daylight makes its way, 
which seem eut out at a blow, pavilions, spindle-shaped tur- 
rcts, or, as they were then called, tournelles, ail differing in 


A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 139 

form, in height, and attitude. One would hâve pronounced 
it a gigantic stone chess-board. 

To the right of the Tournelles, that truss of enormous 
towers, black as ink, running into each other and tied, as it 
were, by a circular moat ; that donjon keep, much more pierced 
with loopholes than with Windows; that drawbridge, always 
raised; that portcullis, always lowered, — is the Bastille. Those 
sorts of black beaks which project from between the battle- 
ments, and which you take from a distance to be eave spouts, 
are cannons. 

Beneath them, at the foot of the formidable édifice, behold 
the Porte Sainte-Antoine, buried between its two towers. 

Beyond the Tournelles, as far as the wall of Charles V., 
spread ont, with rich compartments of verdure and of flowers, 
a velvet carpet of cultivated land and royal parks, in the 
midst of which one recognized, by its labyrinth of trees and 
alleys, the famous Dædalus garden which Louis XI. had given 
to Coictier. The doctor’s observatory rose above the laby- 
rinth like a great isolated column, with a tiny house for a 
capital. Terrible astrologies took place in that laboratory. 

There to-day is the Place Koyale. 

As we hâve just said, the quarter of the palace, of which 
we hâve just endeavored to give the reader some idea by 
indicating only the chief points, filled the angle which Charles 
V.’s wall made with the Seine on the east. The centre of 
the Town was occupied by a pile of houses for the populace. 
It was there, in fact, that the three bridges disgorged upon 
the right bank, and bridges lead to the building of houses 
rather than palaces. That congrégation of bourgeois habita- 
tions, pressed together like the cells in a hive, had a beauty of 
its own. It is with the roofs of a capital as with the waves 
of the sea, — they are grand. First the streets, crossed and 
entangled, forming a hundred amusing figures in the block ; 
around the market-place, it was like a star with a thousand 
rays. 

The Bues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, with their innu- 
merable ramifications, rose one after the other, like trees 
intertwining their branches j and then the tortuous lines, 


140 


NOTEE-BAME. 


the Eues de la Plâtrerie, de la Verrerie, de la Tixeranderie, 
etc., meandered over ail. There were also fine édifices which 
pierced the petrified undulations of that sea of gables. At 
the head of the Pont aux Changeurs, behind which one beheld 
the Seine foaming beneath the wheels of the Pont aux Meun- 
iers, there was the Châlelet, no longer a Eoman tower, as 
under Julian the Apostate, but a feudal tower of the thir- 
teenth century, and of a stone so hard that the pickaxe could 
not break away so inuch as the thickness of the fist in a space 
of three hours ; there was the rich square bell tower of Saint- 
Jacques de la Boucherie, with its angles ail frothing with 
carvings, already admirable, although it was not finished in 
the fifteenth century. (It lacked, in particular, the four 
monsters, which, still perched to-day on the corners of its 
roof, hâve the air of so many sphinxes who are propounding to 
new Paris the riddle of the ancient Paris. Eault, the sculp- 
ter, only placed them in position in 1526, and received twenty 
francs for his pains.) There was the Maison-aux-Piliers, the 
Pillar House, opening upon that Place de Grève of which we 
hâve given the reader some idea; there was Saint-Gervais, 
which a front in good taste ’’ has since spoiled ; Saint-Méry, 
whose ancient pointed arches were still almost round arches ; 
Saint-Jean, whose magnificent spire was proverbial; there 
were twenty other monuments, which did not disdain to bury 
their wonders in that chaos of black, deep, narrow streets. 
Add the crosses of carved stone, more lavishly scattered 
through the squares than even the gibbets ; the cemetery of 
the Innocents, whose architectural wall could be seen in the 
distance above the roofs ; the pillory of the Markets, whose 
top was visible between two chimneys of the Eue de la 
Cossonnerie ; the ladder of the Croix-du-Trahoir, in its square 
always black with people ; the circular buildings of the wheat 
mart ; the fragments of Philip Augustus’s ancient wall, 
which could be made out here and there, drowned among the 
houses, its towers gnawed by ivy, its gates in ruins, with 
crumbling and deformed stretches of wall ; the quay with its 
thousand shops, and its bloody knacker’s yards ; the Seine en- 
cumbered with boats, from the Port au Foin to For-l’Evêque, 


A BIED’S-EYE VIEW OF PABIS. 141 

and y on will hâve a confused picture of what the central 
trapezium of the Town was like in 1482. 

A\ith these two quarters, one of hôtels, the other of houses, 
the third feature of aspect presented by the city was a long 
zone of abbeys, which bordered it in nearly the whole of its 
circumference, from the rising to the setting sun, and, behind 
the circle of fortifications which hemmed in Paris, formed a 
second interior enclosure of convents and chapels. Thus, 
iminediately adjoining the park des ïournelles, between the 
Eue Saint- Antoine and the Vielle Eue du Temple, there stood 
Sainte-Catherine, with its immense cultivated lands, which 
were terminated only by the wall of Paris. Between the old 
and the new Eue du Temple, there was the Temple, a sinister 
group of towers, lofty, erect, and isolated in the middle of a 
vast, battlemented enclosure. Between the Eue Neuve-du- 
Temple and the Eue Saint-Martin, there was the Abbey of 
Saint-Martin, in the midst of its gardons, a superb fortified 
church, whose girdle of towers, whose diadem of bell towers, 
yielded in force and splendor • only to Saint-Germain des 
Prés. Between the Eue Saint-Martin and the Eue Saint- 
Denis, spread the enclosure of the Trinité. 

Lastly, between the Eue Saint Denis, and the Eue Mont- 
orgueil, stood the Filles-Dieu. On one side, the rotting roofs 
and unpaved enclosure of the Cour des Miracles could be 
descried. It was the sole profane ring which was linked to 
that devout chain of convents. 

Finally, the fourth compartment, which stretched itself out 
in the agglomération of the roofs on the right bank, and 
which occupied the western angle of the enclosure, and the 
banks of the river down stream, was a fresh cluster of palaces 
and hôtels pressed close about the base of the Louvre. The 
old Louvre of Philip Augustus, that immense édifice whose 
great tower rallied about it three and twenty chief towers, not 
to reckon the lesser towers, seemed from a distance to be 
enshrined in the Gothic roofs of the Hôtel d’Alençon, and the 
Petit-Bourbon. This hydra of towers, giant guardian of 
Paris, with its four and twenty heads, always erect, with its 
monstrous haunches, loaded or scaled with slates, and «B 


142 


NOTRE-DAME. 


streaming with metallic reflections, terminated with wonderful 
effect the configuration of the ïown towards the west. 

Thus an immense block, wliicli tlie Eomans called insula, or 
island, of bourgeois liouses, flanked on the right and the left 
by two blocks of palaces, crowned, the one by the Louvre, the 
other by the Tournelles, bordered on the north by a long 
girdle of abbeys and cultivated enclosures, ail amalganiated 
and melted together in one view ; upon these thousands of 
édifices, whose tiled and slated roofs outlined upon each other 
so many fantastic chains, the bell towers, tattooed, fluted, and 
ornamented with twisted baiids, of the four and forty churches 
on the right bank ; myriads of cross streets ; for boundary on 
one side, an enclosure of lofty walls with square towers (that 
of the University had round towers) ; on the other, the Seine, 
eut by bridges, and bearing on its bosom a multitude of boats ; 
behold the Town of Paris in the fifteenth century. 

Beyond the walls, several suburban villages pressed close 
about the gates, but less numerous and more scattered than 
those of the University. Behind the Bastille there were 
twenty hovels clustered round the curions sculptures of the 
Croix-Faubin and the flying buttresses of the Abbey of Saint- 
Antoine des Champs ; then Popincourt, lost amid wheat fields ; 
then la Courtille, a merry village of wine-shops ; the hamlet 
of Saint-Laurent with its church whose bell tower, from afar, 
seemed to add itself to the pointed towers of the Porte Saint- 
Martin; the Faubourg Saint-Denis, with the vast enclosure 
of Saint-Ladre ; beyond the Montmartre Gâte, the Grange- 
Batelière, encircled with white walls ; behind it, with its 
chalky slopes, Montmartre, which had then almost as many 
churches as windmills, and which has kept only the windmills, 
for society no longer demands anything but bread for the 
body. Lastly, beyond the Louvre, the Faubourg. Saint- 
Honoré, already considérable at that time, could be seen 
stretching away into the fields, and Petit-Bretagne gleaming 
green, and the Marché aux Pourceaux spreading abroad, in 
whose centre swelled the horrible apparatus used for boiling 
counterfeiters. Between la Courtille and Saint-Laurent, your 
eye had already noticed, on the summit of an eminence 


A BIBD^S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


148 


crouching amid desert plains, a sort of édifice which resem- 
bled from a distance a ruined colonnade, mounted upon a 
basement with its fonndation laid bare. This was neitlier a 
Farthenon, nor a temple of the Olympian Jupiter. It was 
Montfaucon. 

Now, if the énumération of so many édifices, summary as 
we hâve endeavored to make it, has not shattered in the 
reader’s mind the general image of old Paris, as we hâve 
constructed it, we will recapitulate it in a few words. In 
the centre, the island of the City, resembling as to form an 
enormous tortoise, and throwing ont its bridges with tiles for 
scales, like legs from beneath its gray shell of roofs. On the 
left, the monolithic trapezium, firm, dense, bristling, of the 
University; on the right, the vast semicircle of the Town, 
much more intermixed with gardens and monuments. The 
three blocks, city, university, and town, marbled with innu- 
merable streets. Across ail, the Seine, “ foster-mother Seine,’^ 
as says Pather Du Breul, blocked with islands, bridges, and 
boats. Ail about an immense plain, patched with a thousand 
sorts of cultivated plots, sown with fine villages. On the 
left, Issy, Vanvres, Vaugirarde, Montrouge, Gentilly, with 
its round tower and its square tower, etc. ; on the right, 
twenty others, from Conflans to Ville-TEvêque. On the hori- 
zon, a border of hills arranged in a circle like the rim of the 
basin. Finally, far away to the east, Vincennes, and its 
seven quadrangular towers : to the south, Bicêtre and its 
pointed turrets ; to the north, Saint-Denis and its spire; to 
the west. Saint Cloud and its donjon keep. Such was the 
Paris which the ravens, who lived in 1482, beheld from the 
summits of the towers of Notre-Dame. 

Nevertheless, Voltaire said of this city, that before Louis 
XIV., it possessed but four fine monuments : the dôme of 
the Sorbonne, the Val-de-Grâce, the modem Louvre, and I 
know not what the fourth was — the Luxembourg, perhaps. 
Fortunately, Voltaire was the author of Candide ” in spite of 
this, and in spite of this, he is, among ail the men who hâve 
followed each other in the long sériés of humanity, the one 
who has best possessed the diabolical laugh. Moreover, this 


144 


NOTRE-DAME. 


proves that one can be a fine genius, and yet nnderstand noth- 
ing of an art to which one does not belong. Did not Molière 
imagine that he was doing Eaphael and Michael- Angelo a very 
great honor, by calling them those Mignards of their âge ? 

Let us return to Paris and to the fifteenth century. 

It was not then merely a handsome city ; it was a homo- 
geneous city, an architectural and historical product of the 
Middle Ages, a chronicle in stone. It was a city formed of 
two layers only ; the Eomanesque layer and the Gothic layer ; 
for the Eoman layer had disappeared long before, with the 
exception of the Hot Baths of Julian, where it still pierced 
through the thick crust of the middle âges. As for the 
Celtic layer, no specimens were any longer to be found, even 
when sinking wells. 

Pifty years later, when the Kenaissance began to mingle 
with this unity which was so severe and yet so varied, the 
dazzling luxury of its fantasies and Systems, its debasements 
of Koman round arches, Greek columns, and Gothic bases, its 
sculpture which was so tender and so idéal, its peculiar taste 
for arabesques and acanthus leaves, its architectural paganism, 
contemporary with Luther, Paris, was perhaps, still more beau- 
tiful, although less harmonious to the eye, and to the thought. 

But this splendid moment lasted only for a short time ; the 
Eenaissance was not impartial ; it did not content itself with 
building, it wished to destroy ; it is true that it required the 
room. Thus Gothic Paris was complété only for a moment. 
Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie had barely been completed 
when the démolition of the old Louvre was begun. 

After that, the great city became more disfigured every day. 
Gothic Paris, beneath which Boman Paris was effaced, was 
effaced in its turn ; but can any one say what Paris has re- 
placed it? 

There is the Paris of Catherine de Medicis at the Tuil- 
eries; * — the Paris of Henri II., at the Hôtel de Ville, two edi- 

* We hâve seen with sorrow mingled with indignation, that it is the 
intention to increase, to recast, to make over, that is to say, to destroy 
this admirable palace. The architects of our day hâve too heavy a hand 
to touch these délicate Works of the Renaissance. We still cherish a 


A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


145 


fices still in fine taste; — the Paris of Henri IV., at the Place 
Poyale î façades of brick witb stone corners, and slated roofs, 
tri-colored bouses ; — the Paris of Louis XIII., at the Val-de- 
Grâce : a crushed and squat architecture, with vaults like 
basket-handles, and something indescribably pot-bellied in the 
column, and thickset in the dôme ; — the Paris of Louis XIV., 
in the Invalides : grand, rich, gilded, cold ; — the Paris of Louis 

XV. , in Saint-Sulpice : volutes, knots of ribbon, clouds, vermi- 
celli and chiccory leaves, ail in stone ; — the Paris of Louis 

XVI. , in the Panthéon : Saint Peter of Koine, badly copied (the 
édifice is awkwardly heaped together, which has not amended 
its Unes) ; — the Paris of the Eepublic, in the School of Medi- 
cine : a poor Greek and Koman taste, which resembles the 
Coliseum or the Parthenon as the constitution of the year III., 
resembles the laws of Minos, — it is called in architecture, 
^Ghe Messidor* taste; — the Paris of Napoléon in the Place 
Vendôme : this one is sublime, a column of bronze made of 
cannons ; — the Paris of the Kestoration, at the Bourse : a 
very white colonnade supporting a very smooth frieze; the 
whole is square and cost twenty millions. 

To each of these characteristic monuments there is attached 
by a similarity of taste, fashion, and attitude, a certain num- 
ber of houses scattered about in different quarters and which 
the eyes of the connoisseur easily distinguishes and furnishes 
with a date. When one knows how to look, one finds the 
spirit of a century, and the physiognomy of a king, even in 
the knocker on a door. 

The Paris of the présent day has then, no general physiog- 

hope that they will not dare. Moreover, this démolition of the Tuileries 
now, would be not only a brutal deed of violence, which would make a 
drunken vandal blush — it would be an act of treason. The Tuileries is 
not simply a masterpiece of the art of the sixteenth century, it is a page 
of the history of the nineteenth. This palace no longer belongs to the 
king, but to the people. Let us leave it as it is. Our révolution has twice 
set its seal upon its front. On one of its two façades, there are the can- 
non-balls of the lOth of August; on the other, the halls of the 29th of 
July. It is sacred. Paris, April 7, 1831. (Note to theffth édition.) 

* The tenth month of the French republican calendar, from the 19th 
of June to the 18th of July. 


146 


NOTRE-DAME. 


nomy. It is a collection of specimens of many centuries, and 
the finest hâve disappeared. The capital grows only in 
houses, and what houses ! At the rate at which Paris is now 
proceeding, it will renew itself every fifty years. 

Thus the historical significance of its architecture is being 
effaced every day. Monuments are becoming rarer and rarer, 
and one seems to see them gradually engulfed, by the flood 
of houses. Our fathers had a Paris of stone; our sons will 
hâve one of plaster. 

So far as the modem monuments of new Paris are con- 
cerned, we would gladly be excused from mentioning them. 
It is not that we do not admire them as they deserve. The 
Sainte-Geneviève of M. Soufflot is certainly the finest Savoy 
cake that h as ever been made in stone. The Palace of the 
Légion of Honor is also a very distinguished bit of pastry. 
The dôme of the wheat market is an English jockey cap, on a 
grand scale. The towers of Saint-Sulpice are two huge clari- 
nets, and the form is as good as any other ; the telegraph, 
contorted and grimacing, forms an admirable accident upon 
their roofs. Saint-Koch has a door which, for magnificence, 
is comparable only to that of Saint-Thomas d’Aquin. It has, 
also, a crucifixion in high relief, in a cellar, with a sun of 
gilded wood. These things are fairly marvellous. The lan- 
tern of the labyrinth of the Jardin des Plantes is also very 
ingénions. 

As for the Palace of the Bourse, which is Greek as to its col- 
onnade, Koman in the round arches of its doors and Windows, 
of the Kenaissance by virtue of its flattened vault, it is indu- 
bitably a very correct and very pure monument ; the proof 
is that it is crowned with an attic, such as was never seen in 
Athens, a beautiful, straight line, gracefully broken here and 
there by stovepipes. Let us add that if it is according to 
rule that the architecture of a building should be adapted to 
its purpose in such a manner that this purpose shall be imme- 
diately apparent from the mere aspect of the building, one 
cannot be too much amazed at a structure which might be 
indifferently — the palace of a king, a chamber of communes, 
a town-hall, a college, a riding-school, an academy, a ware- 


A BIBD’S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


147 


house, a court-house, a muséum, a barracks, a sepulchre, a 
temple, or a theatre. However, it is an Exchange. An édi- 
fice ought to be, moreover, suitable to the climate. This one 
is evidently constructed expressly for our .cold and rainy skies. 
It bas a roof almost as fiat as roofs in the East, which involves 
sweeping the roof in winter, when it snows ; and of course 
roofs are made to be swept. As for its purpose, of which we 
just spoke, it fulfils it to a marvel ; it is a bourse in France 
as it would hâve been a temple in Greece. It is true that the 
architect was at a good deal of trouble to conceal the dock 
face, which would hâve destroyed the purity of the fine Unes 
of the façade ; but, on the other hand, we hâve that colonnade 
which circles round the édifice and under which, on days of 
high religions ceremony, the théories of the stock-brokers and 
the courtiers of commerce can be developed so majestically. 

These are very superb structures. Let us add a quantity 
of fine, amusing, and varied Street s, like the Eue de Eivoli, 
and I do not despair of Paris presenting to the eye, when 
viewed from a balloon, that richness of line, that opulence 
of detail, that diversity of aspect, that grandiose something 
in the simple, and unexpected in the beautiful, which charac- 
terizes a checker-board. 

However, admirable as the Paris of to-day may seem to 
you, reconstruct the Paris of the fifteenth century, call it up 
before you in thought ; look at the sky athwart that surpris- 
ing forest of spires, towers, and belfries ; spread out in the 
centre of the city, tear away at the point of the islands, fold 
at the arches of the bridges, the Seine, with its broad green 
and yellow expanses, more variable than the skin of a serpent ; 
project clearly against an azuré horizon the Gothic profile of 
this ancient Paris. Make its contour float in a winter’s mist 
which clings to its numerous chimneys ; drown it in profound 
night and watch the odd play of lights and shadows in that 
sombre labyrinth of édifices ; cast upon it a ray of light which 
shall vaguely outline it and cause to emerge from the fog the 
great heads of the towers ; or take that black silhouette 
again, enliven with shadow the thousand acute angles of the 
spires and gables, and make it start out more toothed than a 


148 


NOTBE-BAME, 


shark’s jaw against a copper-colored western sky, — and tlieri 
compare. 

And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression 
with which the modem one can no longer furnish you, climb 
— on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising 
;sun of Easter or of Pentecost — climb upon some elevated 
point, whence yon command the entire capital ; and be prés- 
ent at the wakening of the chimes. Behold, at a signal given 
from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, ail those 
churches qui ver simultaneously. First corne scattered strokes, 
running from one church to another, as when musicians give 
warning that they are about to begin. Then, ail at once, 
behold ! — for it seems at times, as though the ear also pos- 
sessed a sight of its own, — behold, rising from each bell 
tower, something like a column of sound, a cloud of har- 
mony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight 
npwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, 
into the splendid morning sky ; then, little by little, as they 
swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and 
amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer any- 
thing but a mass of sonorous vibrations incessantly sent forth 
from the numerous belfries ; floats, undulates, bounds, whirls 
over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafen- 
ing circle of its oscillations. 

Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos ; great and 
profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency ; you behold 
the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the 
belfries. You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and 
shrill, of the treble and the bass ; you can see the octaves 
leap from one tower to another ; you watch them spring forth, 
winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall 
broken and limping from the bell of wood ; you admire in their 
midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascends and re-ascends 
the seven bells of Saint-Eustache ; you see light and rapid 
notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zig- 
zags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the 
Abbey of Saint Martin, a shrill, cracked singer ; here the 
gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, 


A BIRB^S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS. 


149 


the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal 
chime of the palace scatters on ail sides, and without relax- 
ation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, 
the heavy strokes froin the belfry of Notre-Dame, which 
makes them sparkle like the anvil under the haminer. At 
intervals you behold the passage of sounds of ail forms which 
corne from the triple peal of Saint-Germaine des Prés. Then, 
again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens 
and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts 
forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the 
very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the 
interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the 
vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. 

Assuredly, this is an opéra which it is worth the trouble of 
listening to. Ordinarily, the noise which escapes from Paris 
by day is the city speaking ; by night, it is the city breath- 
ing^j in this case, it is the city singing. Lend an ear, then, 
to this concert of bell towers ; spread over ail the murmur 
of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the 
infinité breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette 
of tho four forests arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, 
like immense stacks of organ pipes ; extinguish, as in a half 
shade, ail that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central 
chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more 
rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult 
of bells and chimes; — than this furnace of music, — than 
these ten thousand brazen voices chanting simultaneously in 
the fiutes of stone, three hundred feet high, — than this city 
which is no longer anything but an orchestra, — than this 
symphony which produces the noise of a tempest. 



BOOK FOURTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

GOOD SOULS. 

SiXTEEN years previous to the epoch when this story takes 
place, one fine morning, on Qnasimodo Sunday, a living créat- 
ure had been deposited, after mass, in tire church of Notre- 
Dame, on the wooden bed secnrely fixed in the vestibule on 
the left, opposite that great image of Saint Christopher, 
which the figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, 
carved in stone, had been gazing at on his knees since 1413, 
when they took it into their heads to overthrow the saint and 
the faithful follower. Upon this bed of wood it was custom- 
ary to expose foundlings for public charity. Whoever cared 
to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was a cop- 
per basin for alms. 

The sort of living being which lay upon that plank on the 
morning of Qnasimodo, in the year of the Lord, 1467, appeared 
to excite to a high degree, the curiosity of the numerous 
group which had congregated about the wooden bed. The 
group was formed for the most part of the fair sex. Hardly 
any one was there except old women. 

150 


GOOD SOULS. 


151 


In the first row, and among those who were most bent over 
the bed, four were noticeable, who, from their gray cagoule, 
a sort of cassock, were recognizable as attached to some de vont 
sisterhood. I do not see why history has not transmitted to 
posterity the names of these four discreet and venerable 
damsels. They were Agnès la Hernie, Jehanne de la Tanne, 
Henriette la Gaultière, Gauchère la Violette, ail four widow^ 
ail four dames of the Chapel Etienne Haudry, who had quitted 
their house with the permission of their mistress, and in con- 
formity with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, in order to corne 
and hear the sermon. 

However, if these good Haudriettes were, for the moment, 
complying with the statutes of Pierre d’Ailly, they certainly 
violated with joy those of Michel de Brache, and the Cardi- 
nal of Pisa, which so inhumanly enjoined silence upon them. 

What is this, sister ? said Agnès to Gauchère, gazing at 
the little créature exposed, which was screaming and writhing 
on the wooden bed, ferrified by so many glances. 

^‘What is to become of us,’^ said Jehanne, if that is the 
way children are made now ? ’’ 

‘‘ l’m not learned in the matter of children,’’ resumed Agnès, 
“ but it must be a sin to look at this one.” 

“ ’Tis not a child, Agnès.” 

‘‘ ’Tis an abortion of a monkey,” remarked Gauchère. 

“ ’Tis a miracle,” interposed Henriette la Gaultière. 

Then,” remarked Agnès, it is the third since the Sunday 
of the Lætare : for, in less than a week, we had the miracle 
of the mocker of pilgrims divinely punished by Notre-Dame 
d’Aubervilliers, and that was the second miracle within a 
month. 

This pretended foundling is a real monster of abomina- 
tion,” resumed Jehanne. 

He yells loud enough to deafen a chanter,” continued Gau- 
chère. Hold your tongue, you little howler ! ” 

^^To think that Monsieur of Keims sent this enormity 
to Monsieur of Paris,” added la Gaultière, clasping her 
hands. 

I imagine,” said Agnès la Herme, that it is a beast, an 


152 


NOTRE-DAME. 


animal, — the fruit of a Jew and a sow ; something not Chris ^ 
tian, in short, which ought to be thrown into the lire or into 
the water.’^ 

really hope,’^ resuined la Gaultière, ^Hhat nobody will 
apply for it.’’ 

Ah, good heavens ! exclaimed Agnès ; those poor nurses 
yonder in the foundling asylum, which forms the lower end of 
the lane as y ou go to the river, just beside Monseigneur the 
bishop ! what if this little monster were to be carried to them 
to suckle ? l’d rather give suck to a vampire.’^ 

^^How innocent that poor la Herme is ! ’’ resumed Jehanne ; 
don’t you see, sister, that this little monster is at least four 
years old, and that he would hâve less appetite for your breast 
than for a turnspit.’’ 

The ‘Gittle monster’’ we should find it difïicult ourselves 
to describe him otherwise, was, in fact, not a new-born 
child. It was a very angular and very lively little mass, im- 
prisoned in its linen sack, stamped with the cipher of Messire 
Guillaume Chartier, then bishop of Paris, with a head project- 
ing. That head was deformed enough ; one beheld only a 
forest of red hair, one eye, a mouth, and teeth. The eye 
wept, the mouth cried, and the teeth seemed to ask only to 
be allowed to bite. The whole struggled in the sack, to the 
great consternation of the crowd, which increased and was 
renewed incessantly around it. 

Dame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, a rich and noble woman, who 
held by the hand a pretty girl about five or six years of âge, 
and dragged a long veil about, suspended to the golden horn of 
her headdress, halted as she passed the wooden bed, and gazed 
for a moment at the wretched créature, while her ' charming 
little daughter, Fleiir-de-Lys de Gondelaurier, spelled out with 
her tiny, pretty finger, the permanent inscription attached to 
the wooden bed : ‘‘ Poundlings.” 

“Keally,” said the dame, turning away in disgust, 
thought that they only exposed children here.” 

She turned her back, throwing into the basin a silver florin, 
which rang among the liards, and made the poor goodwives of 
the chapel of Etienne Haudry open their eyes. 


GOOD SOULS. 


153 


A moment later, the grave and learned Eobert Mistricolle, 
the king’s protonotary, passed, with an enormous missal under 
one arm and his wife on the other (Damoiselle Guillemette la 
Mairesse), having thus by his side his two regulators, — spir- 
itual and temporal. 

“Foundling ! ’’ he said, after examining the object ; ^^found, 
■apparently, on the banks of the river Phlegethon.” 

“ One can only see one eye,” observed Damoiselle Guille- 
mette ; “ there is a wart on the other.” 

^‘IPs not a wart,” returned Master Eobert Mistricolle, ^Gt 
is an egg which contains another démon exactly similar, who 
bears another little egg which contains another devil, and 
so on.” 

“ How do you know that ? ” asked Guillemette la Mairesse. 

“I know it pertinently,” replied the protonotary. 

Monsieur le protonotare,” asked Gauchère, what do you 
prognosticate of this pretended foundling ? ” 

The greatest misfortunes,” replied Mistricollo. 

Ah ! good heavens ! ” said an old woman among the spec- 
^ tators, “ and that besides our having had a considérable pesti- 
lence last year, and that they say that the English are going 
to disembark in a company at Harfleur.” 

Perhaps that will prevent the queen from coming to Paris 
in the month of September,” interposed another j trade is so 
bad already.” 

^^My opinion is,” exclaimed Jehanne de la Tarme, “that it 
would be better for the louts of Paris, if this little magician 
were put to bed on a fagot than on a plank.” 

“ A fine, flaming fagot,” added the old woman. 

“ It would be more prudent,” said Mistricolle 

For several minutes, a young priest had been listening to 
the reasoning of the Haudriettes and the sentences of the 
notary. He had a severe face, with a large brow, a profound 
glance. He thrust the crowd silently aside, scrutinized the 
“ little magician,” and stretched ont his hand upon him. It was 
high time, for ail the devotees were already licking their chops 
over the “ fine, flaming fagot.” 

“ I adopt this child,” said the j)riest. 


154 


NOTEE-BAME, 


He took it in his cassock and carried it off. The spectators 
followed him with frightened glances. A moment later, he had 
disappeared through the Eed Door/’ which then led from the 
church to the cloister. 

When the first surprise was over, Jehanne de la Tarme 
bent down to the ear of la Gaultiére, — 

I told y ou so, sister, — that young clerk, Monsieur Claude 
Frollo, is a sorcerer.’^ 




CHAPTER IL 

CLAUDE FROLLO. 

In fact, Claude Erollo was no common person. 

He belonged to one of those middle-class familles wbich 
were called indifferently, in tlie impertinent language of the 
last century, the high bourgeoise or the petty nobility. This 
family had inherited from the brotliers Paclet the fief of Tire- 
chappe, which was dépendent upon the Bishop of Paris, and 
whose twenty-one houses had been in the thirteenth cen- 
tury the object of so many suits befo're the ofîicial. As pos- 
sessor of this fief, Claude Erollo was one of the twenty-seven 
seigneurs keeping daim to a manor in fee in Paris and its 
suburbs ; and for a long time, his naine was to be seen in- 
scribftd in this quality, between the Hôtel de Tancarville, be- 
longing to Master François Le Rez, and the college of Tours, 
in the records deposited at Saint Martin des Champs. 

Claude Erollo had been destined from infancy, by his pa- 
rents, to the ecclesiastical profession. He had been taught to 
read in Latin ; he had been trained to keep his eyes on the 
ground and to speak low. While still a child, his father had 
cloistered him in the college of Torchi in the University. 
There it was that he had grown up, on the missal and the 
lexicon. 

Moreover, he was a sad, grave, serions child, who studied 
ardently, and learned quickly ; he never uttered a loud cry in 
récréation hour, mixed but little in the bacchanals of the Rue 
du Fouarre, did not know what it was to dare alapas et capillos 

155 


156 


NOTRE-BAME, 


laniare, and had eut no figure in that revoit of 1463, which. 
the annalists register gravely, under the title of The sixth 
trouble of the üniversity.’’ He seldom rallied the poor stu- 
dents of Montaigu on the cappettes from which they derived 
their name, or the bursars of the college of Dormans on their 
shaved tonsure, and their surtout parti-colored of bluish-green, 
blue, and violet cloth, azurini coloris et hruni, as says the char- 
ter of the Cardinal des Quatre-Couronnes. 

On the other hand, he was assiduous at the great and the 
small schools of the Eue Saint Jean de Beauvais. The first 
pupil whom the Abbé de Saint Pierre de Val, at the moment 
of beginning his reading on canon law, always perceived, glued 
to a pillar of the school Saint-Vendregesile, opposite his ros- 
trum, was Claude Frollo, armed with his horn ink-bottle, bit- 
ing his pen, scribbling on his threadbare knee, and, in winter, 
blowing on his fingers. The first auditor whom Messire Miles 
d’Isliers, doctor in décrétais, saw arrive every Monday morn- 
ing, ail breathless, at the opening of the gates of the school 
of the Chef-Saint-Denis, was Claude Frollo. Thus, at sixteen 
years of âge, the young clerk might hâve held his own, in 
mystical theology, against a father of the church ; in canoni- 
cal theology, against a father of the councils ; in scholastm 
theology, against a doctor of Sorbonne. 

Theology conquered, he had plunged into décrétais. From 
the Master of Sentences,’^ he had passed to the Capitularies 
of Charlemagne ; ’’ and he had devoured in succession, in his ap- 
petite for science, décrétais upon décrétais, those of Théodore, 
Bishop of Hispalus ; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms ; 
those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres ; next the décrétal of 
Gratian, which succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne ; 
then the collection of Gregory IX.; then the Epistle of 
Superspecula, of Honorius III. He rendered clear and famil- 
iar to himself that vast and tumultuous period of civil law 
and canon law in conflict and at strife with each other, in the 
chaos of the Middle Ages, — a period which Bishop Théodore 
opens in 618, and which Pope Gregory closes in 1227. 

Décrétais digested, he flung himself upon medicine, on the 
liberal arts. He studied the science of herbs, the science of 


CLAUDE FROLLO. 


157 


unguents; he became an expert in fevers and in contusions, 
in sprains and abcesses. Jacques d’ Espars would bave 
received him as a physician ; Eicbard Hellain, as a surgeon. 
He also passed through ail the degrees of licentiate, master, 
and doctor of arts. He studied the languages. Latin, Greek, 
Hebrew, a triple sanctuary then very little frequented. His 
was a véritable fever for acquiring and hoarding, in the mat- 
ter of science. At the âge of eighteen, he had made his way 
through the four faculties ; it seemed to the young man that 
life had but one sole object : learning. 

It was towards this epoch, that the excessive beat of the 
summer of 1466 caused that grand outburst of the plague 
which carried off more than forty thousand soûls in the vi- 
comty of Paris, and among others, as Jean de Troyes States, 

Master Arnoul, astrologer to the king, who was a very fine 
man, both wise and pleasant.” The rumor spread in the Uni- 
versity that the Eue Tirechappe was especially devastated by 
the malady. It was there that Claude’s parents resided, in 
the midst of their fief. The young scholar rushed in great 
alarm to the paternal mansion. When he entered it, he found 
that both father and mother had died on the preceding day. 
A very young brother of his, who was in swaddling clothes, 
was still alive and crying abandoned in his cradle. This was 
ail that remain ed to Claude of his family ; the young man 
took the child under his arm and went off in a pensive mood. 
Up to that moment, he had lived only in science ; he now 
began to live in life. 

This catastrophe was a crisis in Claude’s existence. Or- 
phaned, the eldest, head of the family at the âge of nineteen, 
he felt himself rudely recalled from the reveries of school to 
the realities of this world. Then, nioved with pity, he was 
seized with passion and dévotion towards that child, his 
brother; a sweet and strange thing was a human affection to 
him, who had hitherto loved his books alone. 

This affection developed to a singular point ; in a soûl so 
new, it was like a first love. Separated since infancy from 
his parents, whom he had hardly known ; cloistered and im- 
mured, as it were, in his books ; eager above ail things to study 


158 


NOTRE-DAME. 


and to learn ; exclusively attentive np to that tiine, to his in- 
telligence which broadened in science, to his imagination, 
which expanded in letters, — the poor scholar had not yet had 
time to feel the place of his heart. 

This young brother, withont mother or father, this little 
child which had fallen abruptly from heaven into his anns, 
made a new man of him. He perceived that there was some- 
thing else in the world besides the spéculations of the Sor- 
bonne, and the verses of Homer ; that man needed affections ; 
that life withont tenderness and without love was only a set 
of dry, shriekiiig, and rending wheels. Only, he imagined, for 
he was at the âge when illusions are as yet replaced only by 
illusions, that the affections of blood and family were the sole 
ones necessary, and that a little brother to love sufficed to fill 
an entire existence. 

He threw himself, therefore, into the love for his little 
Jehan with the passion of a character already profound, 
ardent, concentrated ; that poor frail créature, pretty, fair- 
haired, rosy, and curly, — that orphan with another orphan 
for his only support, touclied him to the bottom of his heart ; 
and grave thinker as he was, he set to meditating upon Jehan 
Avith an infinité compassion. He kept Avatch and Avard over 
him as over something very fragile, and very worthy of care. 
He was more than a brother to the child j he became a mother 
to him. 

Little J ehan had lost his mother while he was still at the 
breast ; Claude gave him to a nurse. Besides the fief of 
Tirechappe, he had inherited from his father the fief of 
Moulin, which Avas a dependency of the square toAver of Gen- 
tilly ; it Avas a mill on a hill, near the château of Winchestre 
(Bicêtre). There was a miller’s wife there who was nursing a 
fine child ; it was not far from the university, and Claude car- 
ried the little Jehan to her in his OAvn arms. 

Brom that time forth, feeling that he had a burden to bear, 
he took life very seriously. The thought of his little brother 
became not only his récréation, but the object of his studies. 
He resolved to consecrate himself entirely to a future for 
which he was responsible in the sight of God, and never to 


CLAUDE FROLLO. 


159 


hâve any other wife, any other child than the happiness and 
fortune of his brother. Therefore, he attached himself more 
closely than ever to the clérical profession. His inerits, his 
learning, his quality of immédiate vassal of the Bishop of 
Paris, threw the doors of the church wide open to him. At 
the âge of twenty, by spécial dispensation of the Holy See, 
he was a priest, and served as the yonngest of the chaplains 
of Hotre-Dame the altar which is called, because of the late 
mass which is said there, altare jpigrorum. 

There, plunged more deeply than ever in his dear books, 
which he qnitted only to run for an hour to the fief of Moulin, 
this mixture of learning and austerity, so rare at his âge, had 
promptly acquired for him the respect and admiration of the 
monastery. From the cloister, his réputation as a learned man 
had passed to the people, among whom it had changed a little, 
a frequent occurrence at that time, into réputation as a sorcerer. 

It was at the moment when he was returning, on Quasimodo 
day, from saying his mass at the Altar of the Lazy, which was 
by the side of the door leading to the nave on the right, near 
the image of the Virgin, that his attention had been attracted 
by the group of old women chattering around the bed for 
foundlings. 

Then it was that he approached the unhappy little créature, 
which was so hated and so menaced. That distress, that de- 
formity, that abandonment, the thought of his young brother, 
the idea which suddenly occurred to him, that if he were to 
die, his dear little Jehan might also be flung miserably on the 
plank for foundlings, — ail this had gone to his heart simul- 
taneously ; a great pity had moved in him, and he had carried 
off the child. 

When he removed the child from the sack, he found it 
greatly deformed, in very sooth. The poor little wretch had 
a wart on his left eye, his head placed directly on his shoulders, 
his spinal column was crooked, his breast bone prominent, and 
his legs bowed ; but he appeared to be lively ; and although 
it was impossible to say in what language he lisped, his cry 
indicated considérable force and health. Claude’s compassion 
increased at the sight of this ugliness ; and he made a vow in 


160 


NOTBE-BAME. 


his heart to rear the child for the love of his brother, in order 
that, whatever might be the future faults of tbe little Jehan, 
he should bave beside him that charity done for his sake. It 
was a sort of investment of good Works, which he was effect- 
ing in the name of his young brother ; it was a stock of good 
Works which he wished to amass in advance for him, in case 
the little rogue should some day find himself short of that 
coin, the only sort which is received at the toll-bar of 
paradise. 

He baptized his adopted child, and gave him the name of 
Quasimodo, either because he desired thereby to mark the day, 
when he had found him, or because he wished to designate by 
that name to what a degree the poor little créature was incom- 
plète, and hardly sketched out. In fact, Quasimodo, blind, 
hunchbacked, knock-kneed, was only an almost 




CHAPTEK III. 

IMMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE. 

How, in 1482, Quasimodo had grown iip. He had become a 
few years previously the bellringer of Notre-Dame, thanks to 
bis father by adoption, Claude Frollo, — who had become arch- 
deacon of J osas, thanks to his suzerain, Messire Louis de Beau- 
mont, — who had become Bishop of Paris, at the death of 
Guillaume Chartier in 1472, thanks to his patron, Olivier Le 
Daim, barber to Louis XI., king by the grâce of God. 

So Quasimodo was the ringer of the chimes of Notre-Dame. 

In the course of time there had been formed a certain pecu- 
liarly intimate bond which united the ringer to the church. 
Separated forever from the world, by the double fatality of 
his unknown birth and his natural deformity, imprisoned from 
his infancy in that impassable double circle, the poor wretch 
had grown used to seeing nothing in this world beyond the 
religions walls which had received him under their shadow. 
Notre-Dame had been to him successively, as he grew up and 
developed, the egg, the nest, the house, the country, the 
universe. 

There was certainly a sort of mysterious and pre-existing 
harmony between this créature and this church. When, still 
a little fellow, he had dragged himself tortuously and by jerks 
beneath the shadows of its vaults, he seemed, with his human 

161 


162 


NOTRE-DAME. 


face and his bestial limbs, tbe natural reptile of tliat humid 
and sombre pavement, upon wbicb tbe shadow of the Roman- 
esque capitals cast so many strange forms. 

Later on, the first time that he caught hold, mechanically, 
of the ropes to the towers, and hung suspended from them, 
and set the bell to clanging, it produced npon his adopted 
father, Claude, the effect of a child whose tongue is unloosed 
and who begins to speak. 

It is thus that, little by little, developing always in sympa- 
thy with the cathédral, living there, sleeping there, hardly 
ever leaving it, subject every hour to the mysterious impress, 
he came to resemble it, he incrusted himself in it, so to speak, 
and became an intégral part of it. His salient angles fitted 
into the retreating angles of the cathédral (if we may be 
allowed this figure of speech), and he seemed not only its in- 
habitant but more than that, its natural tenant. One might 
almost say that he had assumed its form, as the snail takes on 
the form of its shell. It was his dwelling, his hole, his envel- 
ope. There existed between him and the old church so pro- 
found an instinctive sympathy, so many magnetic affinities, 
so many material affinities, that he adhered to it somewhat as 
a tortoise adhères to its shell. The rough and wrinkled cathé- 
dral Tvas his shell. 

It is useless to warn the reader not to take literally ail the 
similes which we are obliged to employ here to express the 
singular, symmetrical, direct, almost consubstantial union of a 
man and an édifice. It is equally unnecessary to state to what 
a degree that whole cathédral was familiar to him, after so 
long and so intimate a cohabitation. That dwelling was pecu- 
liar to him. It had no depths to which Quasimodo had not 
penetrated, no height which he had not scaled. He often 
climbed many stones up the front, aided solely by the un- 
even points of the carving. The towers, on whose exterior 
surface he was frequently seen clambering, like a lizard glid- 
ing along a perpendicular wall, those two gigantic twins, so 
lofty, so menacing, so formidable, possessed for him neither 
vertigo, nor terror, nor shocks of amazement. 

To see them so gentle under his hand, so easy to scale, one 


niMANIS PECORIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOR IPSE. 163 


would hâve said that he had tamed them. By dint of leaping, 
climbing, gambolling amid the abysses of the gigantic cathé- 
dral he had become, in some sort, a monkey and a goat, like 
the Calabrian child who swims before he walks, and play s with 
the sea while still a babe. 

Moreover, it was not his body alone which seeined fashioned 
after the Cathédral, but his mind also. In what condition 
was that mind? What bent had it contracted, what form 
had it assumed beneath that knotted envelope, in that savage 
life ? This it wonld be hard to détermine. Quasimodo had 
been born one eyed, hunchbacked, lame. It was with great 
difïiculty, and by dint of great patience that Claude Frollo had 
succeeded in teaching him to talk. But a fatality was at- 
tached to the poor foimdling. Bellringer of Notre Dame at 
the âge of fourteen, a new infirmity had corne to complété 
his misfortunes : the bells had broken the drums of his ears ; 
he had become deaf. The only gâte which nature had left 
wide open for him had been abruptly closed, and forever. 

In closing, it had eut off the only ray of joy and of light 
which still made its way into the soûl of Quasimodo. His 
soûl fell into profound night. The wretched being’s misery 
became as incurable and as complété as his deformity. Let us 
add that his deafness rendered him to some extent dumb. 
For, in order not to make others laugh, the very moment that 
he found himself to be deaf, he resolved upon a silence which 
he only broke when he was alone. He voluntarily tied that 
tongue which Claude Frollo had taken so much pains to un- 
loose. Hence, it came about, that when necessity constrained 
him to speak, his tongue was torpid, awkward, and like a door 
whose hinges hâve grown rusty. 

If now we were to try to penetrate to the soûl of Quasimodo 
through that thick, hard rind ; if we could Sound the depths 
of that badly constructed organism ; if it were granted to us 
to look with a torch behind those non-transparent organs 
to explore the shadowy interior of that opaque créature, to 
elucidate his obscure corners, his absurd no-thoroughfares, and 
suddenly to cast a vivid light upon the soûl enchained at the 
extremity of that cave, we should, no doubt, find the unhappy 


164 


NOTUE-DAMK 


Psyché in some poor, cramped, and ricketty attitude, like 
those prisoners beneath the Leads of Venice, who grew old 
bent double in a stone box which was both too low and too 
short for them. 

It is certain that the mind becomes atrophied in a defective 
body. Quasimodo was barely conscious of a soûl cast in his 
own image, moving blindly within him. The impressions of 
objects underwent a considérable refraction before reaching 
his mind. His brain was a peculiar medium ; the ideas which 
passed through it issued forth completely distorted. The 
reflection which resulted from this refraction was, necessarily, 
divergent and perverted. 

Hence a thousand optical illusions, a thousand aberrations 
of judgment, a thousand déviations, in which his thought 
strayed, now mad, now idiotie. 

The first effect of this fatal organization was to trouble the 
glance which he cast upon things. He received hardly any 
immédiate perception of them. The external world seemed 
much farther away to him than it does to us. 

The second effect of his misfortune was to render him 
malicious. 

He was malicious, in fact, because he was savage ; he was 
savage because he was ugly. There was logic in his nature, as 
there is in ours. 

His strength, so extraordinarily developed, was a cause of 
still greater malevolence : Malus puer robustus^’^ says 
Hobbes. 

This justice must, however be rendered to him. Malevo- 
lence was not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first 
steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he hacl seen 
himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, 
for him, always a raillery or a malédiction. As he grew up, 
he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught 
the general malevolence. He had picked up the weapon with 
which he had been wounded. 

After ail, he turned his face towards men only with réluc- 
tance ; his cathédral was sufhcient for him. It was peopled 
with marble figures, — kings, saints, bishops, — who at least 


IMMANIS PECOBIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOB IPSE. 165 

did not burst ont laiigbing in bis face, and who gazed npon 
him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, 
those of the monsters and démons, cherished no hatred for 
him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. 
They seemed rather, to be scoihng at other men. The saints 
were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his 
friends and gnarded him. So he held long communion with 
them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before 
one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If any 
one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade. 

And the cathédral was not only society for him, but the 
universe, and ail nature beside. He dreamed of no other 
hedgerows than the painted Windows, always in flower; no 
other shade than that of the foliage of stone which spread 
out, loaded with birds, in the tufts of the Saxon capitals ; of 
no other mountains than the colossal towers of the church ; of 
no other océan than Paris, roaring at their bases. 

What he loved above ail else in the maternai édifice, that 
which aroused his soûl, and made it open its poor wings, 
which it kept so miserably folded in its cavern, that which 
sometimes rendered him even happy, was the bells. He 
loved them, fondled them, talked to them, understood them. 
From the chime in the spire, over the intersection of the aisles 
and nave, to the great bell of the front, he cherished a ten- 
derness for them ail. The central spire and the two towers 
were to him as three great cages, whose birds, reared by him- 
self, sang for him alone. Yet it was these very bells which 
had made him deaf ; but mothers often love best that child 
which has caused them the most suffering. 

It is true that their voice was the only one which he could 
still hear. On this score, the big bell was his beloved. It 
was she whom he preferred out of ail that family of noisy 
girls which bustled above him, on festival days. This bell 
was named Marie. She was alone in the Southern tower, with 
her sister Jacqueline, a bell of lesser size, shut up in asmaller 
cage beside hers. This Jacqueline was so called from the 
name of the wife of Jean Montagu, who had given it to the 
church, which had not prevented his going and figuring with- 


166 


NOTEE-BAME. 


out his head at Montfaiicon. In the second tower tliere were 
six other bells, and, finally, six smaller ones inhabited the 
belfry over the Crossing, with the wooden bell, which rang 
only between after dinner on Good Friday and the morning ot‘ 
the day before Easter. So Quasimodo had fifteen bells in his 
seraglio ; but big Marie was his favorite. 

No idea can be formed of his delight on day s when the 
grand peal was sounded. At the moment when the arch- 
deacon dismissed him, and said, Go ! he mounted the spiral 
staircase of the dock tower faster than any one else could 
hâve descended it. He entered perfectly breathless into the 
aerial chamber of the great bell ; he gazed at her a moment, 
devoutly and lovingly; then he gently addressed her and 
patted her with his hand, like a good horse, which is about 
to set out on a long journey. He pitied her for the trouble 
that she was about to sulîer. After these first caresses, he 
shouted to his assistants, placed in the lower story of the 
tower, to begin. They grasped the ropes, the wheel creaked, 
the enormous capsule of métal started slowly into motion. 
Quasimodo followed it with his glance and trembled. The 
first shock of the clapper and the brazen wall made the frame- 
work upon which it was mounted quiver. Quasimodo vibrated 
with the bell. 

Vah ! he cried, with a senseless burst of laughter. How- 
ever, the movement of the bass was accelerated, and, in pro- 
portion as it described a wider angle, Quasimodo’s eye opened 
also more and more widely, phosphoric and flaming. At 
length the grand peal began ; the whole tower trembled ; 
woodwork, leads, eut stones, ail groaned at once, from the 
piles of the foundation to the trefoils of its summit. Then 
Quasimodo boiled and frothed ; he went and came ; he trem- 
bled from head to foot with the tower. The bell, furious, 
running riot, presented to the two walls of the tower alter- 
nately its brazen throat, whence escaped that tempestuous 
breath, which is audible leagues away. Quasimodo stationed 
himself in front of this open throat; he crouched and rose 
with the oscillations of the bell, breathed in this overwhelm- 
ing breath, gazed by turns at the deep place, which swarmed 


IMMANIS PECOBIS CUSTOS, IMMANIOB IPSE. 167 


with people, two handred feet below liiin, and at tbat enor- 
nious, brazen tongue wbicb came, second after second, to bowl 
in bis ear. 

It was tbe only speecb wbicb be nnderstood, tbe only Sound 
wbicb broke for bim tbe universal silence. He swelled ont 
in it as a bird does in tbe sun. Ail of a sudden, tbe frenzy 
of tbe bell seized upon bim ; bis look became extraordinary ; 
be lay in wait for tbe great bell as it passed, as a spider lies 
in wait for a fly, and flung bimself abruptly upon it, witb 
migbt and main. Tben, suspended above tbe abyss, borne to 
and fro by tbe formidable swinging of tbe bell, be seized tbe 
brazen monster by tbe ear-laps, pressed it between botb knees, 
spurred it on witb bis beels, and redoubled tbe fury of tbe 
peal witb tbe wbole sbock and weigbt of bis body. Mean- 
wbile, tbe tower trembled ; be sbrieked and gnasbed bis teetb, 
bis red bair rose erect, bis breast beaving like a bellows, bis 
eye flasbed fiâmes, tbe monstrous bell neigbed, panting, be- 
neatb bim ; and tben it was no longer tbe great bell of Notre 
Dame nor Quasimodo : it was a dream, a wbirlwind, a tempest, 
dizziness mounted astride of noise ; a spirit clinging to a flying 
crupper, a strange centaur, balf man, balf bell ; a sort of 
horrible Astolpbus, borne away upon a prodigious bippogriff 
of living bronze. 

Tbe presence of tbis extraordinary being caused, as it were, 
a breatb of life to circulate tbrougbout tbe entire catbedral. 
It seemed as tbougb tbere escaped from bim, at least accord- 
ing to tbe growing superstitions of tbe crowd, a mysterious 
émanation wbicb animated ail tbe stones of Notre-Dame, and 
made tbe deep bowels of tbe ancient cburcb to palpitate. It 
sufficed for people to know tbat be was tbere, to make tbem 
believe tbat tbey bebeld tbe tbousand statues of tbe galleries 
and tbe fronts in motion. And tbe catbedral did indeed seem 
a docile and obedient créature beneatb bis band ; it waited on 
bis will to raise its great voice ; it was possessed and filled 
witb Quasimodo, as witb a familiar spirit. One would bave 
said tbat be made tbe immense édifice breathe. He was 
everywbere about it; in fact, be multiplied bimself on ail 
points of tbe structure. Now one perceived witb affrigbt at 


168 


NOTBE-BAME, 


the very top of one of thé towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, 
writhing, crawliiig on ail fours, descending outside above the 
abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going to 
ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon ; it was Quasi- 
modo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of 
the church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, 
crouching and scowling ; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. 
Sometimes one caught sight, upon a bell tower, of an enor- 
mous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furi- 
ously at the end of a rope ; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers 
or the Angélus. Often at night a hideous form was seen 
wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, 
which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of 
the apse ; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, 
said the women of the neighborhood, the whole church took 
on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible ; eyes and 
mouths were opened, here and there ; one heard the dogs, the 
monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night 
and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around the 
monstrous cathédral, barking. And, if it was a Christmas 
Eve, while the great bell, which seemed to émit the death 
rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight mass, such an 
air was spread over the sombre façade that one would hâve 
declared that the grand portai was devouring the throng, and 
that the rose window was watching it. And ail this came 
from Quasimodo. Egypt would hâve taken him for the god 
of this temple ; the Middle Ages belle ved him to be its 
démon : he was in fact its soûl. 

To such an extent was this disease that for those who know 
that Quasimodo has existed, Notre-Dame is to-day deserted, 
inanimate, dead. One feels that something has disappeared 
from it. That immense body is empty ; it is a skeleton ; the 
spirit has quitted it, one sees its place and that is ail. It is 
like a skull which still has holes for the eyes, but no longer 
sight. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DOG AND HIS MASTER. 

Nevertheless, there was one human créature whom Quasi- 
modo excepted from his malice and from his hatred for others, 
and whom lie loved even more, perhaps, than his cathédral : 
this was Claude Frollo. 

The matter was simple ; Claude Frollo had taken him in, 
had adopted him, had nourished him, had reared him. When 
a little lad, it was between Claude Frollo’s legs that he was 
accustomed to seek refuge, when the dogs and the children 
barked after him. Claude Frollo had taught him to talk, to 
read, to write. Claude Frollo had finally made him the bell- 
ringer. Now, to give the big bell in marriage to Quasimodo 
was to give Juliet to Romeo. 

Hence Quasimodo’s gratitude was profound, passionate, 
boundless ; and although the visage of his adopted father 
was often clouded or severe, although his speech was habi- 
tually curt, harsh, imperious, that gratitude never wavered 
for a single moment. The archdeacon had in Quasimodo 
the most submi^sive slave, the most docile lackey, the most 
vigilant of dogs. When the poor bellringer became deaf, 
there had been established between him and Claude Frollo, a 
language of signs, mysterious and understood by themselves 
alone. In this manner the archdeacon was the sole human 
being with whom Quasimodo had preserved communication. 
He was in sympathy with but two things in this world : FTotre- 
Pame and Claude Frollo. 


169 


170 


NOTRE-DAME, 


There is nothing which can be compared with the empire of 
the arcMeacon over the bellringer ; with the attachment of 
the bellringer for the archdeacon. A sign from Claude and 
the idea of giving him pleasure would hâve sufïiced to inake 
Quasimodo hurl himself headlong from the summit of Notre- 
Dame. It was a remarkable thing — ail that physical strength 
which had reached in Quasimodo such an extraordinary devel- 
opment, and which was placed by him blindly at the disposi- 
tion of another. There was in it, no doubt, filial dévotion, 
domestic attachment ; there was also the fascination of one 
spirit by another spirit. It was a poor, awkward, and clumsy 
organization, which stood with lowered head and supplicating 
eyes before a lofty and profound, a powerful and superior 
intellect. Lastly, and above ail, it was gratitude. Gratitude 
so pushed to its extremest limit, that we do not know to what 
to compare it. This virtue is not one of those of which the 
finest examples are to be met with among men. We will say 
then, that Quasimodo loved the archdeacon as never a dog, 
never a horse, never an éléphant loved his master. 




CHAPTER V. 

MORE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO. 

In 1482, Quasimodo was about twenty years of âge ; Claude 
Erollo, about thirty-six. One had grown up, the otber bad 
growii 'old. 

Claude Erollo was no longer the simple scholar of the col- 
lege of Torchi, the tender protector of a little child, the 
young and dreamy philosopher who knew inany things and 
was ignorant of many. He was a priest, austere, grave, mo- 
rose ; one changed with soûls ; monsieur the archdeacon of 
Josas, the bishop’s second acolyte, having charge of the 
two deaneries of Montlhéry, and Châteaufort, and one hundred 
and seventy-four country curacies. He was an imposing and 
sombre personage, before whom the choir boys in alb and 
in jacket trembled, as well as the machicots,* and the brothers 
of Saint- Augustine and the matutinal clerks of Hotre-Dame, 
when he passed slowly beneath the lofty arches of the choir, 
majestic, thoughtful, with arms folded and his head so bent 
upon his breast that ail one saw of his face was his large, 
bald brow. 

Dom Claude Erollo had, however, abandoned neither sci- 
ence nor the éducation of his young brother, those two occu- 
pations of his life. But as time went on, some bitterness had 
been mingled with these things which were so sweet. In the 
long run, says Paul Diacre, the best lard turns rancid. Little 
Jehan Erollo, surnamed (du Moulin) “of the MilP’ because of 

* An official of îTotre-Dame, lower than a beneficed clergyraan, higher 
tlian simiDle paid chanters. 


171 


172 


NOTRE-DAME. 


tlie place where he had been reared, had not grown up in the 
direction wbich Claude would bave liked to impose upon him. 
The big brother counted upon a pious, docile, learned, and 
honorable pupil. But the little brother, like those young trees 
which deceive the gardener’s hopes and turn obstinately to the 
quarter whence they receive sun and air, the little brother did 
not grow and did not multiply, but only put forth fine bushy 
and luxuriant branches on the side of laziness, ignorance, and 
debauchery. He was a régulai* devil, and a very disorderly 
one, who made Dom Claude scowl ; but very droll and very 
subtle, which made the big brother smile. 

Claude had confided him to that saine college of Torchi 
where he had passed his early years in study and méditation ; 
and it was a grief to him that this sanctuary, formerly edified 
by the name of Frollo, should to-day be scandalized by it. He 
sometimes preached Jehan very long and severe sermons, 
which the latter intrepidly endured. After ail, the young 
scapegrace had a good heart, as can be seen in ail comédies. 
But the sermon over, he none the less tranquilly resumed his 
course of séditions and enormities. How it was a héjaune or 
yellow beak (as they called the new arrivais at the university), 
whom he had been mauling by way of welcome ; a precious 
tradition which has been carefully preserved to our own day. 
Again, he had set in movement a band of scholars, who had 
flung themselves upon a wine-shop in classic fashion, quasi 
classico excitati, had then beaten the tavern-keeper ‘^with of- 
fensive cudgels,’’ and joyously pillaged the tavern, even to 
smashing in the hogsheads of wine in the cellar. And then 
it was a fine report in Latin, which the sub-monitor of Torchi 
carried piteously to Dom Claude with- this dolorous marginal 
comment, — Rixa ; prima causa vinum optimum potatum. 
Finally, it was said, a thing quite horrible in a boy of sixteen, 
that his debauchery often extended as far as the Eue de 
Griatigny. 

Claude, saddened and discouraged in his human affections, 
by ail this, had flung himself eagerly into the arms of learn- 
ing, that sister which, at least does not laugh in your face, and 
which always pays you, though in money that is sometimes a 


MOBE ABOUT CLAUDE FBOLLO. 


173 


little hollow, for the attention which you liave paid to her. 
Hence, he became more and more learned, and, at the saine 
tiine, as a natural conséquence, more and more rigid as a 
priest, more and more sad as a man. There are for each of 
us several parallelisms between our intelligence, our habits, 
and our character, which develop without a break, and break 
only in the great disturbances of life. 

As Claude Frollo had passed through nearly the entire 
circle of human learning — positive, exterior, and permissible 

— since his youth, he was obliged, unless he came to a hait, 
ubi defuit orhis, to proceed further and seek other aliments 
for the insatiable activity of his intelligence. The antique 
Symbol of the serpent biting its tail is, above ail, applicable 
to science. It would appear that Claude Frollo had experi- 
enced this. Many grave persons affirm that, after having ex- 
hausted the fas of human learning, he had dared to penetrate 
into the nefas. He had, they said, tasted in succession ail 
the apples of the tree of knowledge, and, whether from hunger 
or disgust, had ended by tasting the forbidden fruit. He had 
taken his place by turns, as the reader has seen, in the confér- 
ences of the theologians in Sorbonne, — in the assemblies of 
the doctors of art, after the manner of Saint-Hilaire, — in the 
disputes of the decretalists, after the manner of Saint-Martin, 

— in the congrégations of physicians at the holy water font of 
Notre-Dame, ad cupam Nostrai-Dominœ. Ail the dishes per- 
mitted and approved, which those four great kitchens called 
the four faculties could elaborate and serve to the understand- 
ing, he had devoured, and had been satiated with them before 
his hunger was appeased. Then he had penetrated further, 
lower, beneath ail that finished, material, limited knowledge ; 
he had, perhaps, risked his soûl, and had seated himself in the 
cavern at that mysterious table of the alchemists, of the as- 
trologers, of the hermetics, of which Averroès, Gillaume de 
Paris, and Nicolas Flamel hold the end in the Middle Ages ; 
and which extends in the East, by the light of the seven- 
branched candlestick, to Solomon, Pythagoras, and Zoroaster. 

That is, at least, what was supposed, whether rightly or not. 

It is certain that the archdeacon often visited the cemetery 


174 


N0TRE-DA3ÎE. 


of the Saints-Innocents, where, it is tme, liis fatlier and 
mother had been buried, witb otlier victinis of the plague of 
1466 ; but that he appeared far less de vont before the cross 
of their grave than before the strange figures with which the 
toinb of Nicolas Flainel and Claude Pernelle, erected just be- 
side it, was loaded. 

It is certain that he had frequently been seen to pass along 
the Eue des Lombards, and furtively enter a little house 
which formed the corner of the Eue des Ecrivans and the Eue 
Marivault. It was the house which Nicolas Elainel had 
built, where he had died about 1417, and which, constantly 
deserted since that time, had already begun to fall in ruins, — 
so greatly had the hermetics and the alchemists of ail coun- 
tries wasted away the walls, merely by carving their names 
upon them. Some neighbors even affirm that they had once 
seen, through an air-hole, Archdeacon Claude excavating, 
turning over, digging up the earth in the two cellars, whose 
supports had been daubed with numberless couplets and hiero- 
glyphics by Nicolas Elamel himself. It was supposed that 
Flamel had buried the philosopheras stone in the cellar ; and 
the alchemists, for the space of two centuries, from Magistri 
to Father Pacifique, never ceased to worry the soil until the 
house, so cruelly ransacked and turned over, ended by falling 
into dust beneath their feet. 

Again, it is certain that the archdeacon had been seized 
with a singular passion for the symbolical door .of Notre- 
Dame, that page of a conjuring book written in stone, by 
Bishop Guillaume de Paris, who bas, no doubt, been damned 
for having afïixed so infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem 
chanted by the rest of the édifice. Archdeacon Claude had 
the crédit also of having fathomed the mystery of the colossus 
of Saint Christopher, and of that lofty, enigmatical statue 
which then stood at the entrance of the vestibule, and which 
the people, in dérision, called ‘‘ Monsieur Legris.’^ But, what 
every one might hâve noticed was the interminable hours 
which he often employed, seated upon the parapet of the area 
in front of the church, in contemplating the sculptures of the 
front ; examining now the foolish virgins with their lamps re- 


MOBE ABOUT CLAUDE FBOLLO. 175 

versed, now the wise virgins witli t*lieir lamps upriglit ; again, 
calculating the angle of vision of that raven which belongs 
to the left front, and which is looking at a inysterious point 
inside the church, where is concealed the philosopher’s stone, 
if it be not in the cellar of Nicolas Flainel. 

It was, let us remark in passing, a singular fate for the 
Church of Notre-Dame at that epoch to be so beloved, in two 
different degrees, and with so much dévotion, by two beings so 
dissimilar as Claude and Quasiniodo. Beloved by one, a sort 
of instinctive and savage half-man, for its beauty, for its 
stature, for the harmonies which emanated from its magnifia 
cent ensemble ; beloved by the other, a learned and passion- 
ate imagination, for its myth, for the sense which it contains, 
for the symbolism scattered beneath the sculptures of its 
front, — like the first text underneath the second in a pa- 
limpsest, — in a word, for the enigma which it is eternally 
propounding to the understanding. 

Furthermore, it is certain that the archdeacon had estab- 
lished himself in that one of the two towers which looks 
upon the Grève, just beside the frame for the bells, a very 
secret little cell, into which no one, not even the bishop, 
entered without his leave, it was said. This tiny cell had 
formerly been made almost at the summit of the tower, 
among the ravens’ nests, by Bishop Hugo de Besançon * who 
had wrought sorcery there in his day. What that cell con- 
tained, no one knew ; but from the strand of the Terrain, at 
night, there was often seen to appear, disappear, and reappear 
at brief and regular intervals, at a little donner window 
opening upon the back of the tower, a certain red, intermit- 
tent, singular light which seemed to follow the panting 
breaths of a bellows, and to proceed from a flame, rather than 
from a light. In the darkness, at that height, it produced a 
singular effect ; and the goodwives said : There’s the arch- 
deacon blowing ! hell is sparkling up yonder ! ” 

There were no great proofs of sorcery in that, after ail, but 
there was still enough smoke to warrant a surmise of fire, and 
the archdeacon bore a tolerably formidable réputation. We 
* Hugo IL de Bisuncîo, 1326 - 1332 . 


176 


NOTRE-DAME. 


ought to mention however, that the sciences of Egypt, that 
necromancy and magic, even the whitest, even the most inno- 
cent, had no more envenomed enemy, no more pitiless denun- 
ciator before tbe gentlemen of the official ty of Notre-Dame. 
Whether this was sincere horror, or the game played by the 
thief who shouts, stop thief ! ’’ at ail events, it did not prevent 
the archdeacon from being considered by the learned heads of 
the chapter, as a soûl who had ventured into the vestibule of 
hell, who was lost in the caves of the cabal, groping amid the 
shadows of the occult sciences. Neither were the people 
deceived thereby ; with any one who possessed any sagacity, 
Quasimodo passed for the démon; Claude Frollo, for the 
sorcerer. It was évident that the bellringer was to serve the 
archdeacon for a given time, at the end of which he woüld 
carry away the latter’s soûl, by way of payment. Thus the 
archdeacon, in spite of the excessive austerity of his life, was 
in bad odor among ail pions soûls ; and there was no devout 
nose so inexperienced that it could not smell him ont to be a 
magician. 

And if, as he grew older, abysses had formed in his science, 
they had also formed in his heart. That at least, is what one 
had grounds for believing on scrutinizing that face upon 
which the soûl was only seen to shine through a sombre cloud. 
Whence that large, bald brow ? that head forever bent ? tha*^^ 
breast always heaving with sighs ? What secret thought- 
caused his mouth to smile with so much bitterness, at the 
same moment that his scowling brows approached each other 
like two bulls on the point of fighting ? Why was what hair 
he had left already gray ? What was that internai lire which 
sometimes broke forth in his glance, to such a degree that his 
eye resembled a hole pierced in the wall of a furnace ? 

These symptoms of a violent moral préoccupation, had ac- 
quired an especially high degree of intensity at the epoch 
when this story takes place. More than once a choir-boy had 
fled in terror at finding him alone in the church, so strange 
and dazzling was his look. More than once, in the choir, at 
the hour of the offices, his neighbor in the stalls had heard 
him mingle with the plain song, ad omnem tonunV; unfntelli- 


MOBE ABOUT CLAUDE FROLLO. 


177 


gible parenthèses. More than once the lanndress of the Ter- 
rain charged with washing the chapter ’’ had observed, not 
without affright, the marks of nails and clenched fingers on 
the snrplice of monsieur the archdeacon of dosas. 

However, he redoubled his severity, and had never been 
more exemplary. By profession as well as by character, he 
had always held himself aloof ^rom women ; he seemed to hâte 
them more than ever. The mere rustling of a silken petticoat 
caused his hood to fall over his eyes. üpon this score he was 
so jealous of austerity and reserve, that when the Dame de 
Beau] eu, the king’s daughter, came to visit the cloister of 
Notre-Dame, in the month of December, 1481, he gravely op- 
posed her entrance, reminding the bishop of the statute of 
the Black Book, dating from the vigil of Saint-Barthélemy, 
1334, which interdicts access to the cloister to ^^any woman 
whatever, old or young, mistress or maid.” IJpon which the 
bishop had been constrained to recite to him the ordinance of 
Legate Odo, which excepts certain great dames, aliquæ mag- 
nâtes mulieres, guæ sine scandalo vitari non possunt. And 
again the archdeacon had protested, objecting that the ordi- 
nance of the legate, which dated back to 1297, was anterior 
by a hundred and twenty-seven years to the Black Book, and 
consequently was abrogated in fact by it. And he had refused 
to appear before the princess. 

It was also noticed that his horror for Bohemian women and 
gypsies had seemed to redouble for some time past. He had 
petitioned the bishop for an edict which expressly forbade 
the Bohemian women to corne and dance and beat their tam- 
bourines on the place of the Parvis ; and for about the same 
length of time, he had been ransacking the mouldy placards 
of the officialty, in order to collect the cases of sorcerers and 
witches condemned to lire or the rope, for complicity in crimes 
with rams, sows, or goats. 



CHAPTER VI. 

UNPOPULARITY. 

The arclideacon and the bellringer, as we bave already 
said, were but little loved by the populace great and small, in 
the vicinity of the cathédral. When Claude and Quasimodo 
went out together, which frequently happened, and when 
they were seen traversing in company, the valet behind the 
master, the cold, narrow, and gloomy streets of the block of 
Notre-Dame, more than one evil word, more than one ironical 
quaver, more than one insulting jest greeted them on their 
way, unless Claude Erollo, which was rarely the case, walked 
with head upright and raised, showing his severe and almost 
august brow to the dumbfounded jeerers. 

Both were in their quarter like the poets of whom 
Régnier speaks, — 

“ Ail sorts of persons run after poets. 

As warblers fly shrieking after owls.” 

Sometimes a mischievous child risked his skin and bones for 
the ineffable pleasure of driving a pin into Quasimodo’s hump. 
Again, a young girl, more bold and saucy than was fitting, 
brushed the priesPs black robe, singing in his face the sardonic 
ditty, “ niche, niche, the devil is caught.’^ Sometimes a group 
of squalid old crones, squatting in a file under the shadow of 
the steps to a porch, scolded noisily as the archdeacon and the 
bellringer passed, and tossed them this encouraging welcome, 

178 


UNPOPULABITT. 


179 


with a curse : Hum ! there^s a fellow whose soûl is made like 
the other one^s body !” Or a band of schoolboys and Street 
urcbins, playing hop-scotch, rose in a body and saluted him 
classically, with some cry in Latin: ^‘Eia! eia! Claudms 
cum claudo ! ” 

But the insult generally passed unnoticed both by the priest 
and the bellringer. Quasimodo was too deaf to hear ail these 
gracions things, and Claude was too dreamy. 




BOOK FIFTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

ABBAS BEATI MARTINI. 

Dom Claude’s famé had spread far and wide. It procured 
for him, at about the epoch when he refused to see M§,dame de 
Beaujeu, a visit which he long remembered. 

It was^in the evening. He had just retired, after the office, 
to his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre-Dame. This cell, 
with the exception, possibly, of some glas s phials, relegated 
to a corner, and filled with a decidedly equivocal powder, 
which strongly resembled the alchemist’s powder of project- 
ion,’^ presented nothing strange or mysterious. There were^ 
indeed, here and there, some inscriptions on the walls, but they 
were pure sentences of learning and piety, extracted from 
good authors. The archdeacon had just seated himself, by the 
light of a three-jetted copper lamp, before a vast coffer 
crammed with manuscripts. He had rested his elbow upon the 
open volume of Honorius d’Autun, De jpredestinatione et lihero 
arhitrio, and he was turning over, in deep méditation, the 
leaves of a printed folio which he had just brought, the sole 
product of the press which his cell contained. In the midst 
of his revery there came a knock at his door. ^^Who’s 

.180 


ABBAS BEATI MABTINI, 181 

there ? ’’ cried the learned man, in the gracions tone of a fam* 
ished dog, disturlied over his bone. 

A voice witbout replied, ^^Your friend, Jacques Coictier.” 
He went to open the door. 

It was, in fact, the king’s physician ; a person about fifty 
years of âge, whose harsh physiognoiny was modified only by a 
crafty eye. Another man accompanied him. Both wore long 
slate-colored robes, furred with minever, girded and closed, 
with caps of the same stuff and hue. Their hands were 
concealed by their sleeves, their feet by their robes, their eyes 
by their caps. 

God help me, messieurs ! ’’ said the archdeacon, showing 
them in ; I was not expecting distinguished visitors at such 
an hour.’’ And while speaking in this courteous fashion he 
cast an uneasy and scrutinizing glance from the physician to 
his companion. 

’Tis never too late to corne and pay a visit to so considér- 
able a learned man as Dom Claude Frollo de Tirechappe,’’ re- 
plied Doctor Coicter, whose Franche-Comté accent made ail his 
pjirases drag along with the majesty of a train-robe. 

There -then ensued between the physician and the arch- 
deacon one of those congratulatory prologues which, in accor- 
dance with custom, at that epoch preceded ail conversations 
between learned men, and which did not prevent them from 
detesting each other in the most cordial manner in the world. 
However, it is the same nowadays ; every wise man’s mouth 
complimenting another wise man is a vase of honeyed gall. 

Claude Frollo’s félicitations to Jacques Coictier bore refer- 
ence principally to the temporal advantages which the worthy 
physician had found means to extract, in the course of his 
much envied career, from each malady of the king, an opera- 
tion of alchemy much better and more certain than the pursuit 
of the philosopheras stone. 

^^In truth. Monsieur le Docteur Coictier, I felt great joy 
on learning of the bishopric given your nephew, my reverend 
seigneur Pierre Versé. Is he not Bishop of Amiens ? ’’ 

^^Yes, monsieur Archdeacon; it is a grâce and mercy of 
God/^ 


182 


NOTUE-DAME. 


you know that you made a great figure on Christmas 
Day at the head of your company of the châmber of accounts, 
Monsieur President ? 

^‘Vice-President, Dom Claude. Alas ! notliing more.” 

“How is your superb bouse in tbe Pue Saint- André des 
Arcs Corning on ? ”Pis a Louvre. I love greatly tbe apricot 
tree wbicb is carved on tbe door, witb tbis play of words : 
‘A l’abri-cotieu — Sbeltered from reefs.’ ” 

“ Alas ! Master Claude, ail tbat masonry costetb me dear. 
In proportion as tbe bouse is erected, I am ruined.” 

“Ho! bave you not your revenues from tbe jail, and tbe 
bailiwick of the Palais, and the rents of ail the bouses, 
sheds, stalls, and bootbs of the enclosure ? ^Tis a fine breast 
to suck.” 

“ My castellany of Poissy bas brougbt me in nothing tbis 
year.” 

“ But your tolls of Triel, of Saint- James, of Saint-Germain- 
en-Laye are always good.” 

“ Six score livres, and not even Parisian livres at that.” 

“ You bave your office of counsellor to the king. That is 
fixed.” 

“Yes, brotber Claude; but that accursed seigneury of 
Poligny, wbicb people make so much noise about, is wortb 
not sixty gold crowns, year ont and year in.” 

In the compliments wbicb Dom Claude addressed to Jacques 
Coictier, tbere was that sardonical, biting, and covertly mock- 
ing accent, and the sad cruel smile of a superior and unhappy 
man who toys for a moment, by way of distraction, witb tbe 
dense prosperity of a vulgar man. Tbe otber did not per- 
çoive it. 

“ Upon my soûl,” said Claude at lengtb, pressing bis band. 
“ I am glad to see you and in sucb good bealth.” 

“ Thanks, Master Claude.” 

“By tbe way,” exclaimed Dom Claude, “bow is your royal 
patient ? ” 

“He payetb not sufficiently bis physician,” replied the 
doctor, casting a side glance at bis companion. 

“ Tbink you so, Gossip Coictier,” said tbe latter. 


AB B AS B BATI MARTINI. 


183 


These words, uttered in a tone of surprise and reproach, 
drew upon this unknown personage the attention of the arch- 
deacon which, to tell the truth, had not been diverted from 
liiin a single moment since the stranger had set foot across 
the threshold of his cell. It had even required ail the thou- 
sand reasons which he had for handling tenderly Doctor 
J acques Coictier, the all-powerfnl physician of King Louis XI., 
to induce him to reçoive the latter thus accompanied. Hence, 
there was nothing very cordial in his manner when Jacques 
Coictier said to him, — 

“ By the way, Dom Claude, I bring you a colleague who has 
desired to see you on account of your réputation. 

Monsieur belongs to science ? ” asked the archdeacon, fix- 
ing his piercing eye upon Coictier’s companion. He found 
beneath the brows of the stranger a glance no less piercing 
or less distrustful than his own. 

He was, so far as the feeble light of the lamp permitted 
one to judge, an old man about sixty years of âge and of 
medium stature, who appeared somewhat sickly and broken in 
health. His profile, although of a very ordinary outline, had 
something powerful and severe about it; his eyes sparkled 
beneath a very deep superciliary arch, like a light in the 
depths of a cave ; and beneath his cap which was well drawn 
down and fell upon his nose, one recognized the broad expanse 
of a brow of genius. 

He took it upon himself to reply to the archdeacon’s ques- 
tion, — 

Keverend master,’’ he said in a grave tone, “ your renown 
has reached my ears, and I wish to consult you. I am but a 
poor provincial gentleman, who removeth his shoes before 
entering the dwellings of the learned. You must know my 
name. I am called Gossip Tourangeau.” 

Strange name for a gentleman,” said the archdeacon to 
himself. 

Xevertheless, he had a feeling that he was in the presence 
of a strong and earnest character. The instinct of his own 
lofty intellect made him recognize an intellect no less lofty 
under Gossip Tourangeau’s furred cap, and as he gazed at 


184 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the solemn face, the ironical smile which Jacques Coictier’s 
presence called forth on his gloomy face, gradually disap- 
peared as twilight fades on the horizon of night. 

Stern and silent, he had resuined his seat in his great arm- 
chair ; his elbow rested as usnal, on the table, and his brow 
on his hand. After a few moments of reflection, he motioned 
his visitors to be seated, and, turning to Gossip Tourangeau 
he said, — 

“ You corne to consult me, master, and upon what science ? 

^‘Your reverence,’^ replied Tourangeau, am ill, very ill. 
You are said to be great Æsculapius, and I am corne to ask 
your advice in medicine/^ 

Medicine ! ’’ said the archdeacon, tossing his head. He 
seemed to meditate for a moment, and then resumed : Gossip 
Tourangeau, since that is your naine, turn your head, you will 
find my reply already written on the wall. 

Gossip Tourangeau obeyed, and read this inscription en- 
graved above his head : Medicine is the daughter of dreams. 
— Jamblique.” 

Meanwhile, Doctor Jacques Coictier had heard his coni- 
panion’s question with a displeasure which Dom Claude’s 
response had but redoubled. He bent down to the ear of 
Gossip Tourangeau, and said to him, softly enough not to be 
heard by the archdeacon : I warned you that he was mad, 
You insisted on seeing him/’ 

’Tis very possible that he is right, madman as he is, Doctor 
Jacques,” replied his comrade in the same low tone, and with 
a bitter smile. 

As you please,” replied Coictier dryly. Then, addressing 
the archdeacon : You are clever at your trade, Dom Claude, 
and you are no more at a loss over Hippocrates than a monkey 
is over a nut. Medicine a dream ! I suspect that the phar- 
macopolists and the master physicians would insist upon ston- 
ing you if they were here. So you deny the influence of 
philtres upon the blood, and unguents on the skin ! You deny 
that eternal pharmacy of flowers and metals, which rs called 
the World, made expressly for that eternal invalid called 
man ! ” 


ABBAS BEATI MARTINI. 185 

I deny,” said Dom Claude coldly, neither pharmacy nor 
the invalid. I reject the physician/’ 

Then it is not true,” resumed Coictier hotly, that goût 
is an internai éruption ; that a wound caused by artillery is to 
be cured by the application of a young niouse roasted ; that 
young blood, properly injected, restores youth to aged veins ; 
it is not true that two and two make four, and that emprosta- 
thonos follows opistathonos.’’ 

The archdeacon replied without perturbation : There are 
certain things of which I think in a certain fashion.” 

Coictier becanie criinson with anger. 

There, there, my good Coictier, let us not g-et angry,’^ 
said Gossip Tourangeau. ^‘Monsieur the archdeacon is our 
friend.” 

Coictier calmed down, muttering in a low tone, — 

^‘After ail, he’s mad.’’ 

Fasque-dieu, Master Claude,” resumed Gossip Tourangeau, 
after a silence, “Ÿou embarrass me greatly. I had two things 
to consult you upon, one touching my health and the other 
touching my star.” 

^‘Monsieur,” returned the archdeacon, ^‘if that be your 
motive, you would hâve done as well not to put yourself out 
of breath climbing my staircase. I do not believe in Medi- 
cine. I do not believe in Astrology.” 

Indeed ! ” said the man, with surprise. 

Coictier gave a forced laugh. 

You see that he is mad,” he said, in a low tone, to Gossip 
Tourangeau. He does not believe in astrology.” 

The idea of imagining,” pursued Dom Claude, that every 
ray of a star is a thread which is fastened to the head of a man ! ” 

And what then, do you believe in ? ” exclainied Gossip 
Tourangeau. 

The archdeacon hesitated for a moment, then he allowed a 
gloomy smile to escape, which seemed to give the lie to his 
response : “ Credo in Deum.^^ 

Fominum nostrum,^^ added Gossip Tourangeau, making the 
sign of the cross. 

Amen,” said Coictier. 


186 


NOTRE-DAME. 


^‘Eeverend master/’ resumed Tourangeau, am charmed 
in soûl to see y ou in such a religions frame of mind. But 
hâve you reached the point, great savant as you are, of no 
longer believing in sciénce ? ” 

‘‘No,” said tlie archdeacon, grasping the arm of Gossip 
Tourangeau, and a ray of enthusiasm lighted up his gloomy 
eyes, “no, I do not reject science. I hâve not crawled so 
long, flat on my belly, with my nails in the earth, through the 
innumerable ramifications of its caverns, without perceiving 
far in front of me, at the end of the obscure gallery, a light, a 
flame, a something, the refiection, no doubt, of the dazzling 
central laboratory where the patient and the wise hâve found 
out God.” 

“And in short,” interrupted Tourangeau, “what do you 
hold to be true and certain ? ” 

“ Alchemy.” 

Coictier exclaimed, “ Pardieu, Dom Claude, alchemy has its 
use, no doubt, but why blasphémé medicine and astrology ? ” 

“Naught is your science of man, naught is your science of 
the stars,” said the archdeacon, commandingly. 

“ That’s driving Epidaurus and Chaldea very fast,” replied 
the physician with a grin. 

“Listen, Messire Jacques. This is said in good faith. I 
am not the king’s physician, and his majesty has not given 
me the Garden of Dædalus in which to observe the constellar 
tions. Don’t get angry, but listen to me. What truth hâve 
you deduced, I will not say from medicine, which is too fool- 
ish a thing, but from astrology ? Cite to me the virtues of the 
vertical boustrophedon, the treasures of the number ziruph 
and those of the number zephirod ! ” 

“Will you deny,” said Coictier, “the sympathetic force of 
the collar bone, and the cabalistics which are derived from 
it?” 

“An error, Messire Jacques ! None of your formulas end in 
reality. Alchemy on the other hand has its discoveries. Will 
you contest results like this ? Ice confined beneath the earth 
for a thousand years is transformed into rock crystals. Lead 
is the ancestor of ail metals. For gold is not a métal, gold is 


ABBAS BEATI MABTINL 


187 


light. Lead requires only four periods of two hundred years 
each, to pass in succession froni the state of lead, to the state 
of red arsenic, from red arsenic to tin, from tin to silver. Are 
not these facts ? But to believe in the collar bone, in the full 
line and in the stars, is as ridiculous as to believe with the 
inhabitants of Grand-Cathay that the golden oriole turns into 
a mole, and that grains of wheat turn into fish of the carp 
species/’ 

“ I hâve studied hermetic science ! ” exclaimed Coictier, 
and I affirm — ’’ 

The fiery archdeacon did not allow him to finish : And I 
hâve studied medicine, astrology, and hermetics. Here alone 
is the truth.’’ (As he spoke thus, he took from the top of the 
coffer a phial filled with the powder which we hâve mentioned 
above), ‘^here alone is light ! Hippocrates is a dream ; Urania 
is a dream ; Hermes, a thought. Gold is the sun ; to make 
gold is to be God. Herein lies the one and only science. I 
hâve sounded the depths of medicine and astrology, I tell 
y ou ! Naught, nothingness ! The human body, shadows ! the 
planets, shadows ! ’’ 

And he fell back in his armchair in a commanding and in- 
spired attitude. Gossip Tourangeau watched him in silence. 
Coictier tried to grin, shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly, 
and repeated in a low voice, — 

A madman ! ’’ 

And,’’ said Tourangeau suddenly, “ the wondrous resuit, — 
hâve you attained it, hâve you made gold ? ” 

If I had made it,” replied the archdeacon, articulating his 
words slowly, like a man who is reflecting, “the king of 
France would be named Claude and not Louis.” 

The stranger frowned. 

“ What am I saying ? ” resumed Dom Claude, with a smile 
of disdain. “ What would the throne of France be to me when 
I could rebuild the empire of the Orient ? ” 

“Very good!” said the stranger. 

“ Oh, the poor fool ! ” murmured Coictier. 

The archdeacon went on, appearing to reply now only to 
his thoughts, — 


188 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ But no, I am still crawling ; I am scratching my face and 
knees against tke pebbles of the subterranean pathway. I 
catcb a glimpse, I do not contemplate ! I do not read, I spell 
ont ! 

And when you know how to read ! demanded the stran- 
ger, will you make gold ? 

Who doubts it ? said the archdeacon. 

In that case Our Lady knows that I am greatly in need of 
money, and I should much desire to read in your books. Tell 
me, reverend master, is your science inimical or displeasing to 
Our Lady ? 

Whose archdeacon I am ? Dom Claude contented him- 
self with replying, with tranquil hauteur. 

^^That is true, my master. Well! will it please you to 
initiate me ? Let me spell with you.’’ 

Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a 
Samuel. 

Old man, it requires longer years than remain to you, to 
undertake this voyage across mysterious things. Your head 
is very gray ! One cornes forth from the cavern only with 
white hair, but only those with dark hair enter it. Science 
alone knows well how to hollow, wither, and dry up human 
faces ; she needs not to hâve old âge bring her faces already 
furrowed. Nevertheless, if the desire possesses you of put- 
ting yourself under discipline at your âge, and of deciphering 
the formidable alphabet of the sages, corne to me ; ’tis well, 
I will make the effort. I will not tell you, poor old man, to 
go and visit the sepulchral chambers of the pyramids, of 
which ancient Herodotus speaks, nor the brick tower of Baby- 
lon, nor the immense white marble sanctuary of the Indian 
temple of Eklinga. I, no more than yourself, hâve seen the 
Chaldean masonry works constructed according to the sacred 
form of the Sikra, nor the temple of Solomon, which is 
destroyed, nor the stone doors of the sepulchre of the kings 
of Israël, which are broken. We will content ourselves with 
the fragments of the book of Hermes which we hâve here. 
I will explain to you the statue of Saint Christopher, the 
Symbol of the sower, and that of the two angels which are 


• ABBAS BEATI MABTINL 189 

on the front of the Sainte-Cliapelle, and one of whidi holds 
in his hands a vase, the other, a cloiid — ” 

Here J acques Coictier, who had been unhorsed by the arch- 
deacon’s impetuous replies, regained his saddle, and inter- 
rupted hiin with the triomphant tone of one learned man 
correcting another, — Erras amice Claudi. The Symbol is 
not the number. You take Orpheus for Hermes.’’ 

’Tis you who are in error,” replied the archdeacon, gravely. 
“ Dædalus is the base ; Orpheus is the wall ; Hermes is the 
édifice, — that is ail. You shall corne when you will,’^ he con- 
tinued, turning to Tourangeau, “I will show you the little 
parcels of gold which remained at the bottom of Nicholas 
Tlamel’s alembic, and you shall compare them with the gold 
of Guillaume de Paris. I will teach you the secret virtues 
of the Greek word, peristera. But, first of ail, I will make 
you read, one after the other, the marble letters of the alpha • 
bet, the granité pages of the book. We shall go to the portai 
of Bishop Guillaume and of Saint- Jean le Bond at the Sainte- 
Chapelle, then to the house of Nicholas Flamel, Bue Mari- 
vault, to his tomb, which is at the Saints-Innocents, to his two 
hospitals. Bue de Montmorency. I will make you read the 
hieroglyphics which cover the four great iron cramps on the 
portai of the hospital Saint-Gervais, and of the Bue de la 
Ferronnerie. We will spell out in company, also, the façade 
of Saint-Côme, of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents, of Saint Mar- 
tin, of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie — 

For a long time, Gossip Tourangeau, intelligent as was his 
glance, had appeared not to understand Dom Claude. He 
interrupted. 

“ Pasque-dieu ! what are your books, then ? ” 

Here is one of them,’’ said the archdeacon. 

And opening the window of his cell he pointed out with 
his finger the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlin- 
ing against the starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, 
its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous 
two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of the city. 

The archdeacon gazed at the gigantic édifice for some time 
in silence, then extending his right hand, with a sigh, towards 


190 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the printed book which lay open on the table, and bis left 
towards Notre-Dame, and tnrning a sad glance from the book 
to the chnrch, — “ Alas,^^ he said, this will kill that.^^ 

Coictier, who had eagerly approached the book, could not 
repress an exclamation. Hé, but now, what is there so for- 
midable in this : ^ Glossa in Epistolas D. Pauli, Norimbergœ, 
Antonius KohurgeVj 1474.’ This is not new. ’Tis a book of 
Pierre Lombard, the Master of Sentences. Is it because it is 
printed ? ” 

^‘Yon hâve said it,” replied Claude, who seemed absorbed 
in a profound méditation, and stood resting, his forefinger 
bent backward on the folio which had corne from the fanions 
press of Nuremberg. Then he added these mysterious words : 

Alas ! alas ! small things corne at the end of great things; a 
tooth triumphs over a mass. The Nile rat kills the crocodile 
the swordfish kills the whale, the book will kill the édifice.” 

The curfew of the cloister sounded at the moment when 
Master Jacques was repeating to his companion in low tones, 
his eternal refrain, He is mad ! ” To which his companion 
this time replied, I believe that he is.” 

It was the hour when no stranger could remain in the 
cloister. The two visitors withdrew. Master,” said Gossip 
Tourangeau, as he took leave of the archdeacon, “ I love wise 
men and great minds, and I hold you in singular esteem. 
Corne to-morrow to the Palace des Tournelles, and inquire for 
the Abbé de Sainte-Martin, of Tours.” 

The archdeacon returned to his chamber dumbfounded, com- 
prehending at last who Gossip Tourangeau was, and recalling 
that passage of the register of Sainte-Martin, of Tours : — 
Ahhas heati Martini, Scilicet Eex Franciæ, est canonicus de 
consuetudine et habet parvam 'præbendam quam habet sanctus 
Venantius, et débet sedere in sede thesaurarii. 

It is asserted that after that epoch the archdeacon had fre- 
quent conférences with Louis XI., when his majesty came to 
Paris, and that Dom Claude’s influence quite overshadowed 
that of Olivier le Daim and Jacques Coictier, who, as was his 
habit, rudely took the king to task on that account. 



CHAPTEK IL 

THIS WILL KILL THAT. 

OuR lady readers will pardon us if we pause for a moment 
to seek what could hâve been the thought concealed beneath 
those enigmatic words of tbe archdeacon: “This will kill 
tbat. The book will 'kill the édifice.” 

To our mind, this thought had two faces. In the first place, 
it was a priestly thought. It was the affright of the priest in 
the presence of a new agent, the printing press. It was the 
terror and dazzled amazement of the men of the sanctuary, in 
the presence of the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was 
the pulpit and the manuscript taking the alarm at the printed 
Word: something similar to the stupor of a sparrow which 
should behold the angel Légion unfold his six million wings. 
It was the cry of the prophet who already hears emancipated 
humanity roaring and swarming ; who beholds in the future, 
intelligence sapping faith, opinion dethroning belief, the world 
shaking ofî Rome. It was the prognostication of the philos- 
opher who sees hum an thought, volatilized by the press, evap- 
orating from the théocratie récipient. It was the terrer of 
the soldier who examines the brazen battering ram, and says : 
— “ The tower will crumble.” It signified that one power 
was about to succeed another power. It ineant, The press 
will kill the church.” 


191 


192 


NOTRE-DAME. 


But underlying tliis thought, the first and most simple one, 
no doubt, there was in our opinion another, newer one, a corol- 
lary of the first, less easy to perceive and more easy to con- 
test, a view as philosophical and belonging no longer to the 
priest alone but to the savant and the artist. It was a pre- 
sentiment that human thought, in changing its form, was 
about to change its mode of expression ; that the dominant 
idea of each génération would no longer be written with the 
same matter, and in the same manner ; that the book of stone, 
so solid and so durable, was about to make way for the book 
of paper, more solid and still more durable. In this connec- 
tion the archdeacon’s vague formula had a second sense. It 
meant, Printing will kill architecture.” 

In fact, from the origin of things down to the fifteenth cen- 
tury of the Christian era, inclusive, architecture is the great 
book of humanity, the principal expression of man in his dif- 
ferent stages of development, either as a force or as an in- 
telligence. 

When the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, 
when the mass of réminiscences of the human race became 
so heavy and so confused that speech naked and flying, ran 
the risk of losing them on the way, men transcribed them on 
the soi! in a manner which was at once the most visible, most 
durable, and most natural. They sealed each tradition beneath 
a monument. 

The first monuments were simple masses of rock, which the 
iron had not touched,” as Moses says. Architecture began like 
ail writing. It was first an alphabet. Men planted a stone 
upright, it was a letter, and each letter was a hieroglyph, and 
upon each hieroglyph rested a group of ideas, like the capital 
on the column. This is what the earliest races did everywhere, 
at the same moment, on the surface of the entire world. We 
find the standing stones ” of the Celts in Asian Siberia ; in 
the pampas of America. 

Later on, they made words ; they placed stone upon stone, 
they coupled those syllables of granité, and attempted some 
combinations. The Celtic dolmen and cromlech, the Etruscan 
tumulus, the Hebrew galgal, are words. Some, especially the 


mis WILL KILL TH AT. 


193 


tumulus, are proper names. Sometimes even, when men had 
a great deal of stone, and a vast plain, they wrote a phrase. 
The immense pile of Karnac is a complété sentence. 

At last they made books. Traditions had brought forth 
symbols, beneath which they disappeared like the trunk of a 
tree beneath its foliage ; ail these symbols in which humanity 
placed faith continued to grow, to multiply, to intersect, to 
become more and more complicated; the first monuments 
no longer sufïiced to contain them, they were overflowing in 
every part ; these monuments hardly expressed now the prim- 
itive tradition, simple like themselves, naked and prone upon 
the earth. The Symbol felt the need of expansion in the édi- 
fice. Then architecture was developed in proportion with hu- 
man thought ; it became a giant with a thousand heads and 
a thousand arms, and fixed ail this fioating symbolism in an 
eternal, visible, palpable form. While Dædalus, who is force, 
measured ; while Orpheus, who is intelligence, sang ; — the pil- 
lar, which is a letter ; the arcade, which is a syllable ; the pyra- 
mid, which is a word, — ail set in movement at once by a law of 
geometry and by a law of poetry, grouped themselves, com- 
bined, amalgamated, descended, ascended, placed themselves 
side by side on the soil, ranged themselves in stories in the 
sky, until they had written under the dictât ion of the general 
idea of an epoch, those marvellous books which were also mar- 
vellous édifices : the Pagoda of Eklinga, the Ehamseion ■ of 
Egypt, the Temple of Solomon. 

The generating idea, the word, was not only at the founda- 
tion of ail these édifices, but also in the form. The temple of 
Solomon, for example, was not alone the binding of the holy 
book ; it was the holy book itself. On each one of its concen- 
tric walls, the priests could read the word translated and mani- 
fested to the eye, and thus they followed its transformations 
from sanctuary to sanctuary, until they seized it in its last tab- 
ernacle, under its most concrète form, which still belonged to 
architecture : the arch. Thus the word was enclosed in an 
édifice, but its image was upon its envelope, like the human 
form on the coffin of a mummy. 

And not only the form of édifices, but the sites selected for 


194 


NOTRE-DAME. 


them, revealed the thôught which tliey represented, accord- 
ing as the Symbol to be expressed was graceful or grave. 
Greece crowned her mountains with a temple harmonious to 
the eye ; India disembowelled hers, to chisel therein those 
monstrous subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic rows of 
granité éléphants. 

Thus, during the first six thousand years of the world, from 
the most immémorial pagoda of Hindustan, to the cathédral 
of Cologne, architecture was the great handwriting of the 
human race. And this is so true, that not only every religions 
Symbol, but every human thought, has its page and its monu- 
ment in that immense book. 

Ail civilization begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. 
This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture. 
For, let us insist upon this point, masonry must not be thought 
to be powerful only in erecting the temple and in expressing 
the myth and sacerdotal symbolism; in inscribing in hiero- 
glyphs upon its pages of stone the mysterious tables of the 
law. If it were thus, — as there cornes in ail human society a 
moment when the sacred Symbol is worn out and becomes 
obliterated under freedom of thought, when man escapes from 
the priest, when the excrescence of philosophies and Systems 
devour the face of religion, — architecture could not reproduce 
this new state of human thought ; its leaves, so crowded on the 
face, would be empty on the back ; its work would be mutilated ; 
its book would be incomplète. But no. 

Let us take as an example the Middle Ages, where we see 
more clearly because it is nearer to us. During its first 
period, while theocracy is organizing Europe, while the Vati- 
can is rallying and reclassing about itself the éléments of a 
Eome inade from the Rome which lies in ruins around the 
Capitol, while Christianity is seeking ail the stages of society 
amid the rubbish of anterior civilization, and rebuilding with 
its ruins a new hiérarchie universe, the keystone to whose 
vault is the priest — one first hears a dull écho from that 
chaos, and then, little by little, one sees, arising from beneath 
the breath of Christianity, from beneath the hand of the 
barbarians, from the fragments of the dead Greek and Roman 


THIS WILL KILL TH AT. 


195 


architectures, that mysterious Komanesqiie architecture, sister 
of the théocratie masonry of Egypt and of India, inaltérable 
einblem of pure catholicism, unchangeable hieroglyph of the 
papal unity. Alï the thought of that day is written, in fact, 
in this sombre, Eomanesque style. One feels everywhere in 
it authority, unity, the impénétrable, the absolute, Gregory 
VII. ; always the priest, never the man ; everywhere caste, 
never the people. 

But the Crusades arrive. They are a great popular move- 
ment, and every great popular movement, whatever may be 
its cause and object, always sets free the spirit of liberty 
from its final precipitate. New things spring into life every 
day. Here opens the stormy period of the Jacqueries, Pra- 
gueries, and Leagues. Authority wavers, unity is divided. 
Peudalism demands to share with theocracy, while awaiting 
the inévitable arrivai of the people, who will assume the part 
of the lion : Quia nominor leo. Seignory pierces through 
sacerdotalism ; the commonality, through seignory. The face 
of Europe is changed. Well ! the face of architecture is 
changed also. Like civilization, it has turned a page, and the 
new spirit of the time finds her ready to Write at its dictation. 
It returns from the crusades with the pointed arch, like the 
nations with liberty. 

Then, while Eome is undergoing graduai dismemberment, 
Eomanesque architecture dies. The hieroglyph deserts the 
cathédral, and betakes itself to blazoning the donjon keep, in 
order to lend prestige to feudalism. The cathédral itself, that 
édifice formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the bour- 
geoisie, by the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and 
falls into the power of the artist. The artist builds it after 
his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Eancy 
and caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica 
and his altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong 
to the artist. The architectural book belongs no longer to the 
priest, to religion, to Eome ; it is the property of poetry, of 
imagination, of the people. Hence the rapid and innumerable 
transformations of that architecture which owns but three 
centuries, so striking after the stagnant immobility of the 


196 


NOTBE-BAME. 


Komanesque architecture, which owns six or seven. Never- 
theless, art marches on with giant strides. Popular genius 
and originality accomplish the task which the bishops forin- 
erly fulfilled. Each race writes its line upon the book, as it 
passes ; it erases the ancient Romanesque hieroglyphs on the 
frontispieces of cathedrals, and at the most one only sees 
dogma cropping out here and there, beneath the new symbol 
which it has deposited. The popular drapery hardly permits 
the religious skeleton to be suspected. One cannot even form 
an idea of the liberties which the architects then take, even 
toward the Church. There are capitals knitted of nuns and 
monks, shamelessly coupled, as on the hall of chimney pièces 
in the Palais de Justice, in Paris. There is Noah’s adventure 
carved to the last detail, as under the great portai of Bourges. 
There is a bacchanalian monk, with ass’s ears and glass in 
hand, laughing in the face of a whole community, as on the 
lavatory of the Abbey of Bocherville. There exists at that 
epoch, for thought written in stone, a privilège exactly com- 
parable to our présent liberty of the press. It is the liberty 
of architecture. 

This liberty goes very far. Sometimes a portai, a façade, 
an entire church, présents a symbolical sense absolutely for- 
eign to worship, or even hostile to the Church. In the thirteenth 
century, Guillaume de Paris, and Nicholas Flamel, in the 
fifteenth, wrote such séditions pages. Saint-Jacques de la 
Boucherie was a whole church of the opposition. 

Thought was then free only in this manner ; hence it never 
wrote itself out completely except on the books called édifices. 
Thought, under the form of édifice, could hâve beheld itself 
burned in the public square by the hands of the executioner, 
in its manuscript form, if it had been sufficiently imprudent 
to risk itself thus ; thought, as the door of a church, would 
hâve been a spectator of the punishment of thought as 
a book. Having thus only this resource, masonry, in order to 
make its way to the light, flung itself upon it from ail quar- 
ters. Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals which hâve 
covered Europe — a number so prodigious that one can hardly 
believe it even after having verified it. Ail the material 


THIS WILL KILL TUAT. 


197 


forces, ail the intellectual forces of society converged towards 
the same point : architecture. In this inanner, under the pre- 
text of building churches to Grod, art was developed in its 
magnificent proportions. 

ïhen whoever was born a poet became an architect. 
Genius, scattered in the niasses, repressed in every quarter 
under feudalism as under a testudo of brazen bucklers, find- 
ing no issue except in the direction of architecture, — gushed 
forth through that art, and its Iliads assumed the form of ca- 
thedrals. Ail other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under 
the discipline of architecture. They were the workmen of the 
great work. The architect, the poet, the master, summed up 
in his person the sculpture which carved his façades, painting 
which illuininated his Windows, music which set his bells to 
pealing, and breathed into his organs. There was nothing 
down to poor poetry, — properly speaking, that which per- 
sisted in vegetating in manuscripts, — which was not forced, 
in order to make something of itself, to corne and frame itself 
in the édifice in the shape of a hymn or of prose ; the same 
part, after ail, which the tragédies of Æschylus had played 
in the sacerdotal festivals of Greece ; Genesis, in the temple 
of Solomon. 

Thus, down to the time of Gutenberg, architecture is the 
principal writing, the universal writing. In that granité 
book, begun by the Orient, continued by Greek and Eoman 
antiquity, the Middle Ages wrote the last page. Moreover, 
this phenomenon of an architecture of the people following 
an architecture of caste, which we hâve just been observing 
in the Middle Ages, is reproduced with every analogous 
movement in the human intelligence at the other great 
epochs of history. Thus, in order to enunciate here only sum- 
marily, a law which it would require volumes to develop ; in 
the high Orient, the cradle of primitive times, after Hindoo 
architecture came Phœnician architecture, that opulent mother 
of Arabian architecture; in antiquity, after Egyptian archi- 
tecture, of which Etruscan style and cyclopean monuments 
are but one variety, came Greek architecture (of which the 
Eoman style is only a continuation), surchargcd with the 


198 


NOTBE-BAME. 


Carthaginian dôme ; in modem times, after Eomanesque arch- 
itecture came Gothic architecture. And by separating these 
three sériés into their component parts, we shall find in the 
three eldest sisters, Hindoo architecture, Egyptian architect- 
ure, Romanesque architecture, the saine Symbol ; that is to 
say, theocracy, caste, unity, dogma, myth, God : and for the 
three younger sisters, Phœnician architecture, Greek archi- 
tecture, Gothic architecture, whatever, nevertheless, may be 
the diversity of form iiiherent in their nature, the same 
signification also ; that is to say, liberty, the people, man. 

In the Hindu, Egyptian, or Romanesque architecture, one 
feels the priest, nothing but the priest, whether he calls him^ 
self Brahmin, Magian, or Pope. It is not the same in the 
architectures of the people. They are richer and less sacred. 
In the Phœnician, one feels the merchant ; in the Greek, the 
republican ; in the Gothic, the citizen. 

The general characteristics of ail théocratie architecture are 
immutability, horror of progress, the préservation of tradi- 
tional lines, the consécration of the primitive types, the con- 
stant bending of ail the forms of men and of nature to the 
incompréhensible caprices of the Symbol. These are dark 
books, which the initiated alone understand how to decipher. 
Moreover, every form, every deformity even, has there a 
sense which renders it inviolable. Do not ask of Hindoo, 
Egyptian, Romanesque masonry to reform their design, or 
to improve their statuary. Every attempt at perfecting is 
an impiety to them. In these architectures it seems as 
though the rigidity of the dogma had spread over the stone 
like a sort of second petrifaction. The general characteris- 
tics of popular masonry, on the contrary, are progress, origin- 
ality, opulence, perpétuai movement. They are already 
sufiiciently detached from religion to think of their beauty, to 
take care of it, to correct without relaxation their parure of 
statues or arabesques. They are of the âge. They hâve 
something human, which they mingle incessantly with the 
divine Symbol under which they still produce. Hence, édi- 
fices compréhensible to every soûl, to every intelligence, to 
every imagination, symbolical still, but as easy to understand 


THIS WILL KILL TR AT. 


199 


as nature. Between théocratie architecture and this there is 
the différence that lies between a sacred language and a 
vulgar language, between hieroglyphics and art, between 
Solomon and Phidias. 

If the reader will sum up what we hâve hitherto briefly, 
very briefly, indicated, neglecting a thousand proofs and also 
a thousand objections of detail, he will be led to this : that 
architecture was, down to the fifteenth century, the chief reg- 
ister of humanity ; that in that interval not a thought which 
is in any degree complicated made its appearance in the 
World, which has not been worked into an édifice ; that every 
popular idea, and every religions law, has had its monumental 
records ; that the human race has, in short, had no important 
thought which it has not written in stone. And why ? Be- 
cause every thought, either philosophical or religions, is inter- 
ested in perpetuating itself; because the idea which has 
moved one génération wishes to move others also, and leave 
a trace. Now, what a precarious immortality is that of the 
manuscript ! How much more solid, durable, unyielding, is a 
book of stone ! In order to destroy the written word, a torch 
and a Turk are sufficient. To demolish the constructed word, 
a social révolution, a terrestrial révolution are required. The 
barbarians passed over the Coliseum; the deluge, perhaps, 
passed over the Pyramids. 

In the fifteeeth century everything changes. 

Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself, 
not only more durable and more resisting than architecture, 
but still more simple and easy. Architecture is dethroned. 
Gutenberg’s letters of lead are about to supersede Orpheus’s 
letters of stone. 

The hook is about to Mil the édifice. 

The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. 
It is the mother of révolution. It is the mode of expression 
of humanity which is totally renewed ; it is human thought 
stripping off one form and donning another ; it is the complété 
and definitive change of skin of that symbolical serpent which 
since the days of Adam has represented intelligence. 

In its printed form, thought is more imperishable than 


200 


NOTRE-DAME. 


ever ; it is volatile, irrésistible, indestructible. It is mingled 
with the air. In the days of architecture it made a moun- 
tain of itself, and took powerful possession of a century and 
a place. Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters 
itself to the four winds, and occupies ail points of air and 
space at once. 

We repeat, who does not perceive that in this form it is 
far more indelible ? It was solid, it has become alive. It 
passes from duration in time .to iminortality. One can demol- 
ish a mass ; how can one extirpate ubiquity ? If a flood 
cornes, the mountains will hâve long disappeared beneath the 
waves, while the birds will still be flying about ; and if a 
single ark floats on the surface of the cataclysm, they will 
alight upon it, will float with it, will be présent with it at 
the ebbing of the waters ; and the new world which emerges 
from this chaos will behold, on its awakening, the thought of 
the world which has been submerged soaring above it, winged 
and living. 

And when one observes that this mode of expression is not 
only the most conservative, but also the most simple, the 
most con veulent, the most practicable for ail ; when one 
reflects that it does not drag after it bulky baggage, and does 
not set in motion a heavy apparatus ; when one compares 
thought forced, in order to transform itself into an édifice, to 
put in motion four or five other arts and tons of gold, a whole 
mountain of stones, a whole forest of timber-work, a whole 
nation of workmen; when one compares it to the thought 
which becomes a book, and for which a little paper, a little 
ink, and a pen suffice, — how can one be surprised that human 
intelligence should hâve quitted architecture for printing ? 
Cut the primitive bed of a river abruptly with a canal hol- 
lowed ont below its level, and the river will desert its bed. 

Behold how, beginning with the discovery of printing, 
architecture withers away little by little, becomes lifeless and 
bare. How one feels the water sinking, the sap departing, 
the thought of the times and of the people withdrawing from 
it ! The chill is almost imperceptible in the fifteenth century ; 
the press is, as yet, too weak, and, at the most, draws from 


THIS WILL KILL TH AT. 


201 


powerful architecture a superabundance of life. But prac- 
tically beginning with the sixteenth century, the malady of 
architecture is visible ; it is no longer the expression of society ; 
it becomes classic art in a misérable manner; froin being 
Gallic, European, indigenous, it becomes Greek and Eoman; 
from being true and modem, it becomes pseudo-classic. It is 
this decadence which is called the Benaissance. A magnifi- 
cent decadence, however, for the ancient Gothic genius, that 
Sun which sets behind the gigantic press of Mayence, still 
pénétrâtes for a while longer with its rays that whole hybrid 
pile of Latin arcades and Corinthian columns. 

It is that setting sun which we mistake for the dawn. 

Nevertheless, from the moment when architecture is no 
longer anything but an art like any other ; as soon as it is no 
longer the total art, the sovereign art, the tyrant art, — it has 
no longer the power to retain the other arts. So they eman- 
cipate themselves, break the yoke of the architect, and take 
themselves off, each one in its own direction. Each one of 
them gains by this divorce. Isolation aggrandizes everything. 
Sculpture becomes statuary, the image trade becomes paint- 
ing, the canon becomes music. One would pronounce it an 
empire dismembered at the death of its Alexander, and whose 
provinces become kingdoms. 

Hence Kaphael, Michael Angelo, Jean Goujon, Palestrina, 
those splendors of the dazzling sixteenth century. 

Thought émancipâtes itself in ail directions at the same time 
as the arts. The arch-heretics of the Middle Ages had already 
made large incisions into Catholicism. The sixteenth century 
breaks religious unity. Before the invention of printing, 
reform would hâve been merely a schism ; printing converted 
it into a révolution. Take away the press ; heresy is ener- 
vated. Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenburg is 
the precursor of Luther. 

hTevertheless, when the sun of the Middle Ages is com- 
pletely set, when the Gothic genius is forever extinct upon 
the horizon, architecture grows dim, loses its color, becomes 
more and more effaced. The printed book, the gnawing worm 
of the édifice, sucks and devours it. It becomes bare, denuded 


202 


NOTRE-DAME. 


of its foliage, and grows visibly emaciated. It is petty, it is 
poor, it is nothing. It no longer expresses anything, not even 
the memory of the art of another tiine. E-educed to itself, aban- 
doned by the other arts, because hunian thought is abandoning 
it, it summons bunglers in place of artists. Glass replaces the 
painted Windows. The stone-cutter succeeds the sculptor. 
Farewell ail sap, ail originality, ail life, ail intelligence. It 
drags along, a lamentable workshop mendicant, from copy to 
copy. Michael Angelo, who, no doubt, felt even in the six- 
teenth century that it was dying, had a last idea, an idea of 
despair. That Titan of art piled the Panthéon on the Par- 
thenon, and made Saint-Peter’s at Rome. A great work, 
which deserved to remain unique, the last originality of 
architecture, the signature of a giant artist at the bottom of 
the colossal register of stone which was closed forever. With 
Michael Angelo dead, what does this misérable architecture, 
which survived itself in the State of a spectre, do ? It takes 
Saint-Peter in Rome, copies it and parodies it. It is a mania. 
It is a pity. Each century has its Saint-Peter’s of Rome ; in 
the seventeenth century, the Val-de-Grâce ; in the eighteenth, 
Sainte-Geneviève. Each country has its Saint-Peter’s of 
Rome. London has one ; Petersburg has another ; Paris has 
two or three. The insignificant testament, the last dotage of 
a décrépit grand art falling back into infancy before it dies. 

If, in place of the characteristic monuments which we hâve 
just described, we examine the general aspect of art from the 
sixteenth to the eighteenth century, we notice the same phe- 
nomena of decay and phthisis. Beginning with François II., 
the architectural form of the édifice effaces itself more and 
more, and allows the geometrical form, like the bony struct- 
ure of an emaciated invalid, to become prominent. The fine 
lines of art give way to the cold and inexorable Unes of 
geometry. An édifice is no longer an édifice ; it is a polyhe- 
dron. Meanwhile, architecture is tormented in her struggles 
to conceal this nudity. Look at the Greek pediment inscribed 
upon the Roman pediment, and vice versa. It is still the 
Panthéon on the Parthenon: Saint-Peter’s of Rome. Here 
are the brick houses of Henri IV.; with their stone corners ; 


THIS WILL KILL TH AT, 


203 


the Place Koyale, the Place Dauphine. Here are the churches 
of Louis XIII., heavy, squat, thickset, crowded together, 
loaded with a dôme like a hump. Here is the Mazarin arch- 
itecture, the wretched Italian pasticcio of the Pour Nations. 
Here are the palaces of Louis XIV., long barracks for cour- 
tiers, stiff, cold, tiresome. Here, finally, is Louis XY., with 
chiccory leaves and vermicelli, and ail the warts, and ail the 
fungi, which disfigure that décrépit, toothless, and coquettish 
old architecture. From François II. to Louis XV., the evil 
has increased in geometrical progression. Art has no longer 
anything but skin upon its bones. It is miserably perishing. 

Meanwhile what becomes of printing ? AU the life which 
is leaving architecture cornes to it. In proportion as archi- 
tecture ebbs, printing swells and grows. That capital of 
forces which human thought had been expending in édifices, 
it henceforth expends in books. Thus, from the sixteenth 
century onward, the press, raised to the level of decaying 
architecture, contends with it and kills it. In the seven- 
teenth century it is already sufficiently the sovereign, sufïi- 
ciently triumphant, sufîiciently established in its victory, to 
give to the world the feast of a great literary century. In 
the eighteenth, having reposed for a long time at the Court 
of Louis XIV., it seizes again the old sword of Luther, puts it 
into the hand of Voltaire, and rushes impetuously to the 
attack of that ancient Europe, whose architectural expres- 
sion it has already killed. At the moment when the eigh- 
teenth century cornes to an end, it has destroyed everything. 
In the nineteenth, it begins to reconstruct. 

Now, we ask, which of the three arts has really represented 
human thought for the last three centuries ? which translates 
it ? which expresses not only its literary and scholastic 
vagaries, but its vast, profound, universal movement ? which 
constantly superposes itself, without a break, without a gap, 
upon the human race, which walks a monster with a thousand 
legs ? — Architecture or printing ? 

It is printing. Let the reader make no mistake ; architect- 
ure is dead ; irretrievably slain by the printed book, — slain 
because it endures for a shorter time, — slain because it costs 


204 


NOTBE-BAME. 


more. Every cathédral represents millions. Let the reader 
now imagine what an investment of funds it would require to 
rewrite tlie architectural book ; to cause thousands of édifices 
to swarm once more upon the soil ; to return to those epochs 
when the throng of monuments was such, according to the 
statement of an eye witness, that one would hâve said that 
the World in shaking itself, had cast off its old garments in 
order to cover itself with a white vesture of churches.’’ Erat 
enim ut si mundus, ipse excutiendo semet, rejecta vetustate, can- 
didam ecclesiarum vestem indueret. (Glaber Radolphus.) 

A book is so soon made, costs so little, and can go so far ! 
How can it surprise us that ail human thought flows in this 
channel ? This does not mean that architecture will not 
still hâve a fine monument, an isolated masterpiece, here and 
there. We may still hâve from time to time, under the reign 
of printing, a column made I suppose, by a whole army from 
melted camion, as we had under the reign of architecture, 
Iliads and Romanceros, Mahabâhrata, and Nibelungen Lieds, 
made by a whole people, with rhapsodies piled up and melted 
together. The great accident of an architect of genius may 
happen in the twentieth century, like that of Dante in the 
thirteenth. But architecture will no longer be the social art, 
the collective art, the dominating art. The grand poem, the 
grand édifice, the grand work of humanity will no longer be 
built ; it will be printed. 

And henceforth, if architecture should arise again acci- 
dentally, it will no longer be mistress. It will be subser- 
vient to the law of literature, which formerly received the 
law from it. The respective positions of the two arts will be 
inverted. It is certain that in architectural epochs, the poems, 
rare it is true, resemble the monuments. In India, Vyasa is 
branching, strange, impénétrable as a pagoda. In Egyptian 
Orient, poetry has like the édifices, grandeur and tranquillity 
of line ; in antique Greece, beauty, serenity, calm ; in Chris- 
tian Europe, the Catholic majesty, the popular naïvete, 
the rich and luxuriant végétation of an epoch of renewal. 
The Bible resembles the Pyramids ; the Iliad, the Parthenon ; 
Homer, Phidias. Dante in the thirteenth century is the last 


TRIS WILL KILL TUAT. 205 

Komanesque churcli; Shakespeare in the sixteenth, the last 
Gothic cathédral. 

Thus, to sum up what we hâve hitherto said, in a fashion 
which is necessarily incomplète and mntilated, the human 
race has two books, two registers, two testaments : masonry 
and printing ; the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper. No 
doubt, when one contemplâtes these two Bibles, laid so broadly 
open in the centuries, it is permissible to regret the visible 
majesty of the writing of granité, those gigantic alphabets 
formulated in colonnades, in pylons, in obelisks, those sorts of 
human mountains which cover the world and the past, from 
the pyramid to the bell tower, from Cheops to Strasburg. 
The past must be reread upon these pages of marble. This 
book, written by architecture, must be admired and perused 
incessantly ; but the grandeur of the édifice which printing 
erects in its turn must not be denied. 

That édifice is colossal. Some compiler of statistics has 
calculated, that if ail the volumes which hâve issued from the 
press since Gutenberg’s day were to be piled one upon another, 
they would fill the space between the earth and the moon ; 
but it is not that sort of grandeur of which we wished to 
speak. Nevertheless, when one tries to collect in one’s mind 
a comprehensive image of the total products of printing down 
to our own days, does not that total appear to us like an 
immense construction, resting upon the entire world, at which 
humanity toils without relaxation, and whose monstrous crest 
is lost in the profound mists of the future ? It is the ant- 
hill of intelligence. It is the hive whither corne ail imagina- 
tions, those golden bees, with their honey. 

The édifice has a thousand stories. Here and there one 
beholds on its staircases the gloomy caverns of science which 
pierce its interior. Everywhere upon its surface, art causes 
its arabesques, rosettes, and laces to thrive luxuriantly before 
the eyes. There, every individual work, however capricious 
and isolated it may seem, has its place and its projection. 
Harmony results from the whole. From the cathédral of 
Shakespeare to the mosque of Byron, a thousand tiny bell 
towers are piled pell-mell above this metropolis of universal 


206 


NOTRE-DAME. 


thouglit. At its base are written some ancient titles of 
humanity wliich architecture had not registered. To the left 
of the entrance lias been fixed the ancient bas-relief, in white 
marble, of Homer ; to the right, the polyglot Bible rears its 
seven heads. The hydra of the Eomancero and some other 
hybrid fornis, the Vedas and the Nibelungen bristle further on. 

Nevertheless, the prodigious édifice still remains incomplète. 
The press, that giant machine, which incessantly pumps ail 
the intellectual sap of society, belches forth withoiit pause 
fresh materials for its work. The whole human race is on the 
scaffoldings. Each mind is a mason. The humblest fills his 
hole, or places his stone. Eétif de le Bretonne brings his hod 
of plaster. Every day a new course rises. Independently of 
the original and individual contribution of each writer, there 
are collective contingents. The eighteenth century gives the 
Encyclopedia, the révolution gives the Moniteur. Assuredly, 
it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless 
spirals ; there also are confusion of tongues, incessant activ- 
ity, indefatigable labor, eager compétition of ail humanity, 
refuge promised to intelligence, a new Flood against an over- 
flow of barbarians. It is the second tower of Babel of the 
human race. 




BOOK SIXTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

AN IMPARTIAL GLANCE AT THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY. 

A VER Y happy personage in the year o£ grâce 1482, was the 
noble gentleman Eobert d’Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de 
Beyne, Baron d’Ivry and Saint Andry en la Marche, counsellor 
and Chamberlain to the king, and guard of the provostship of 
Paris. It was already nearly seventeen years since he had 
received from the king, on November 7, 1465, the cornet 
year,* that fine charge of the provostship of Paris, which was 
repiited rather a seigneury than an office. Dignitas, says 
Joannes Lœmnœus, quæ cum non exigua potestate poUtiam 
concernente, atque prærogativis multis et jurïbiis conjuncta est. 
A marvellous thing in ’82 was a gentleman bearing the king’s 
commission, and whose letters of institution ran back to the 
epoch of the marriage of the natural daughter of Louis XI. 
with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon. 

The same day on which Eobert d’Estouteville took the place 
of Jacques de Villiers in the provostship of Paris, Master 
Jehan Dauvet replaced Messire Helye de Thorrettes in the 
first presidency of the Court of Parliament, Jehan Jouvenel 

* This cornet against which Pope Calixtns, uncle of Borgia, ordered 
public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835. 

207 


208 


NOTRE-DAME, 


des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliers in the office of 
chancellor of France, Kegnault des Dormans ousted Pierre 
Puy from th.e charge of master of requests in ordinary of the 
king’s household. Now, upon how many heads had the presi- 
dency, the chancellorship, the mastership passed since Pobert 
d’Estouteville had held the provostship of Paris. It had been 
“ granted to him for safekeeping,” as the letters patent said ; 
and certainly he kept it well. He had clung to it, he had 
incorporated himself with it, he had so identified himself 
with it that he had escaped that fury for change which pos^ 
sessed Louis XI., a tormenting and industrious king, whose 
policy it was to maintain the elasticity of his power by fre- 
quent appointments and révocations. More than this ; the 
brave chevalier had obtained the reversion of the office for his 
son, and for two years already, the name of the noble man 
J acques d’Estouteville, equerry, had figured beside his at the 
head of the register of the salary list of the provostship of 
Paris. A rare and notable favor indeed ! It is true that 
Eobert d’Estouteville was a good soldier, that he had loyally 
raised his pennon against “ the league of public good,” and 
that he had presented to the queen a very marvellous stag in 
confectionery on the day of her entrance to Paris in 14. . . . 
Moreover, he possessed the good friendship of Messire Tristan 
l’Hermite, provost of the marshals of the king’s household. 
Hence a very sweet and pleasant existence was that of Mes- 
sire Eobert. In the first place, very good wages, to which 
were attached, and from which hung, like extra bunches of 
grapes on his vine, the revenues of the civil and criminal 
registries of the provostship, plus the civil and criminal reve- 
nues of the tribunals of Embas of the Châtelet, without reck- 
oning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and of 
Corbeil, and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of 
Paris, on the corders of firewood and the measurers of sait. 
Add to this the pleasure of displaying himself in rides about 
the city, and of making his fine military costume, which y ou 
may still admire sculptured on his tomb in the abbey of 
Yalmont in Xormandy, and his morion, ail embossed at 
Montlhéry, stand ont a contrast against the parti-colored 


THE ANCIENT MAGISTEACY. 


209 


red and tawny robes of the aldermen and police. And then, 
was it nothing to wield absolute supremacy over the sergeants 
of the police, the porter and watch of the Châtelet, the two 
anditors of the Châtelet, auditores castelleti, the sixteen com- 
missioners of the sixteen quarters, the jailer of the Châtelet, 
the four enfeoffed sergeants, the hundred and twenty mounted 
sergeants, with maces, the chevalier of the watch with his 
watch, his sub-watch, his counter-watch and his rear-watch ? 
Was it nothing to exercise high and low justice, the right to 
interrogate, to hang and to draw, without reckoning petty 
jurisdiction in the first resort (in prima instantia, as the char- 
ters say), on that viscomty of Paris, so nobly appanaged with 
seven noble bailiwicks ? Can anything sweeter be imagined 
than rendering judgments and decisions, as Messire Eobert 
d’Estouteville daily did in the G-rand Châtelet, under the large 
and flattened arches of Philip Augustus ? and going, as he 
was wont to do every evening, to that charming house situated 
in the Eue Galilée, in the enclosure of the royal palace, which 
he held in right of his wife. Madame Ambroise de Loré, to 
repose after the fatigue of having sent some poor wretch to 
pass the night in “ that little cell of the Eue de Escorcherie, 
which the provosts and aldermen of Paris used to make their 
prison ; the same being eleven feet long, seven feet and four 
inches wide, and eleven feet high ? ’’ *- 

And not only had Messire Eobert d’Estouteville his spécial 
court as provost and vicomte of Paris; but in addition he 
had a share, both for eye and tooth, in the grand court of the 
king. There was no head in the least elevated which had not 
passed through his hands before it came to the headsman. It 
was he who went to seek M. de Nemours at the Bastille Saint 
Antoine, in order to conduct him to the Halles ; and to con- 
duct to the Grève M. de Saint-Pol, who clamored and resisted, 
to the great joy of the provost, who did not love monsieur the 
constable. 

Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life 
happy and illustrions, and to deserve some day a notable page 
in that interesting history of the provosts of Paris, where 
* Comptes du domaine, 1383. 


210 


NOTBE-BAME. 


one learns that Oudard de Villeneuve had a house in the Kue 
des Boucheries, that Guillaume de Hangest purchased the 
great and the little Savoy, that Guillaume Thiboust gave the 
nuns of Sainte-Geneviève his houses in the Eue Clopin, that 
Hugues Aubriot lived in the Hôtel du Porc-Epic, and other 
domestic facts. 

Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently 
and joyously, Messire Eobert d’Estouteville woke np on the 
morning of the seventh of January, 1482, in a very surly and 
peevish mood. Whence came this ill temper ? He could not 
hâve told himself. Was it because the sky was gray ? or was 
the buckle of his old belt of Montlhéry badly fastened, so 
that it confined his provostal portliness too closely ? had he 
beheld ribald fellows, marching in bands of four, beneath his 
window, and setting him at défiance, in doublets but no shirts, 
hats without crowns, with wallet and bottle at their side ? 
Was it a vague presentiment of the three hundred and seventy 
livres, sixteen sous, eight farthings, which the future King 
Charles VH. was to eut off from the provostship in the follow- 
iug year ? The reader can take his choice ; we, for our part, 
are mnch inclined to believe that he was in a bad hnmor, 
simply because he was in a bad humor. 

Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day 
for every one, and above ail for the magistrate who is charged 
with sweeping away ail the filth, properly and figuratively 
speaking, which a festival day produces in Paris. And then 
he had to hold a sitting at the Grand Châtelet. Now, we 
hâve noticed that judges in general so arrange matters that 
their day of audience shall also be their day of bad humor, 
so that they may always hâve some one npon whom to vent 
it conveniently, in the name of the king, law, and justice. 

However, the audience had begun without him. His lieu- 
tenants, civil, criminal, and private, were doing his work, 
according to usage ; and from eight o’clock in the morning, 
some scores of bourgeois and bourgeoises, heaped and crowded 
into an obscure corner of the audience chamber of Embas du 
Châtelet, between a stout oaken barrier and the wall, had been 
gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle of civil 


THE ANCHENT MAGISTBACY. 


211 


and criminal justice dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne, 
auditor of the Châtelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in 
a somewhat confused and utterly haphazard manner. 

The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table studded with 
fleurs-de-lis stood at one end, with a large arm-chair of carved 
oak, which belonged to the provost and was empty, and a stool 
on the left for the auditor. Master Florian. Below sat the 
clerk of the court, scribbling ; opposite was the populace ; and 
in front of the door, and in front of the table were niany ser- 
geants of the provostship in sleeveless jackets of violet 
camlet, with white crosses. Two sergeants of the Parloir- 
aux-Bourgeois, clothed in their jackets of Toussaint, half red, 
half blue, were posted as sentinels before a low, closed door, 
which was visible at the extremity of the hall, behind the 
table. A single pointed window, narrowly encased in the 
thick wall, illuminated with a pale ray of January sun two 
grotesque figures, — the capricious démon of stone carved as 
a tail-piece in the keystone of the vaulted ceiling, and the 
judge seated at the end of the hall on the fieurs-de-lis. 

Imagine, in fact, at the provost’s table, leaning upon his 
elbows between two bundles of documents of cases, with his 
foot on the train of his robe of plain brown cloth, his face 
buried in his hood of white lamb’s skin, of which his brows 
seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed, winking, bearing majes- 
tically the load of fat on his cheeks which met under his 
chin. Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Châtelet. 

Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. 
Master Florian delivered judgment, none the less, without 
appeal and very suitably. It is certainly quite sufiicient for a 
judge to bave the air of listening; and the venerable auditor 
fulfilled this condition, the sole one in justice, ail the better 
because his attention could not be distracted by any noise. 

Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his 
deeds and gestures, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo 
du Moulin, that little student of yesterday, that ^^stroller,’’ 
whom one was sure of encountering ail over Paris, anywhere 
except before the rostrums of the professors. 

Stay,’’ he said in a low tone to his companion, Kobin 


212 


NOTRE-DAME, 


Poussepain, who was grinning at his side, while he was mak- 
ing his comments on the scenes which were being unfolded 
before his eyes, ^^yonder is Jehanneton du Buisson. The 
beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at the Marché-Neuf ! — 
Upon luy soûl, he is condemning her, the old rascal ! he has 
no more eyes than ears. Fifteen sous, four farthings, paris- 
ian, for having worn two rosaries ! ^Tis somewhat dear. Lex 
duri carminis. Who’s that ? Kobin Chief-de-Ville, hauberk- 
maker. For having been passed and received master of the 
said trade ! That’s his entrance money. He ! two gentle^ 
men among these knaves ! Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly , 
Two equerries. Corpus Christi ! Ah ! they hâve been playing 
at dice. When shall I see our rector here ? A hundred livrets 
parisian, fine to the king ! That Barbedienne strikes like a 
deaf man, — as he is ! ITl be my brother the archdeacon, if 
that keeps me from gaming ; gaming by day, gaming by night, 
living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soûl after 
my shirt. Holy Virgin, what damsels ! One after the other, 
my lambs. Ambroise Lécuyère, Isabeau la Paynette, Bérarde- 
Gironin ! I know them ail, by Heavens ! A fine ! a fine I 
That’s what will teach you to wear gilded girdles ! ten sous 
parisis ! you coquettes ! Oh ! the old snout of a judge ! deaf 
and imbécile ! Oh ! Florian the doit ! Oh ! Barbedienne the 
blockhead ! There he is at the table ! He’s eating the 
plaintiff, he’s eating the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams, 
he fills himself. Fines, lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal 
charges, salaries, damages, and interests, gehenna, prison, and 
jail, and fetters with expenses are Christmas spice cake and 
marchpanes of Saint-John to him ! Look at him, the pig ! — 
Corne ! Good ! Another amorous woman ! Thibaud-la-Thi- 
baude, neither more nor less ! For having corne from the Eue 
Glatigny ! What fellow is this ? Gieffroy Mabonne, gendarme 
bearing the crossbow. He has cursed the name of the 
Father. A fine for la Thibaude ! A fine for Gieffroy ! A 
fine for them both ! The deaf old fool ! he must hâve mixed 
up the two cases ! Ten to one that he makes the wench pay 
for the oath and the gendarme for the amour ! Attention, 
Eobin Poussepain ! What are they going to bring in ? Here 


THE ANCIEN T MAGISTRACY. 


213 


are many sergeants ! By Jupiter ! ail the bloodhounds of the 
pack are there. It must be the great beast of the hunt — a 
wild boar. And ’tis one, Bobin, ’tis one. And a fine one too ! 
Hercle ! ’tis our prince of yesterday, our Pope of the Pools, 
our bellringer, our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our grimace ! 
’Tis Quasimodo !” — 

It was he indeed. 

It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and 
under good guard. The squad of policemen who surrounded 
him was assisted by the chevalier of the watch in person, 
wearing the arms of France embroidered on his breast, and 
the arms of the city on his back. There was nothing, how- 
ever, about Quasimodo, except his deformity, which could 
justify the display of halberds and arquebuses; he was 
gloomy, silent, and tranquil. Only now and then did his 
single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance upon the bonds with 
which he was loaded. 

He cast the saine glance about him, but it was so dull and 
sleepy that the women only pointed him ont to each other in 
dérision. 

Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over atten- 
tively the document in the complaint entered against Quasi- 
modo, which the clerk handed him, and, having thus glanced 
at it, appeared to reflect for a moment. Thanks to this 
précaution, which he always was careful to take at the moment 
when on the point of beginning an examination, he knew 
beforehand the names, titles, and misdeeds of the accused, 
made eut and dried responses to questions foreseen, and suc- 
ceeded in extricating himself from ail the windings of the 
interrogation without allowing his deafness to be too apparent. 
The written charges were to him what the dog is to the 
blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray him here 
and there, by some incohérent apostrophe or some unintelli- 
gible question, it passed for profundity with some, and for 
imbecility with others. In neither case did the honor of the 
magistracy sustain any injury ; for it is far better that a judge 
should be reputed imbécile or profound than deaf. Hence he 
took great care to conceal his deafness from the eyes of ail, 


214 


NOTBE-DAME. 


and lie generally succeeded so well that lie liad reached the 
point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easier than 
is supposed. AU hunchbacks walk witli tlieir lieads held 
high, ail stutterers harangue, ail deaf people speak low. As 
for hiin, he believed, at the most, that his ear was a little 
refractory. It was the sole concession which he made on this 
point to public opinion, in his moments of frankness and 
examination of his conscience. 

Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo’s affair, he 
threw back his head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of 
more majesty and impart iality, so that, at that moment, he was 
both deaf and blind. A double condition, without which no 
judge is perfect. It was in this magisterial attitude that he 
began the examination. 

Your name ? 

Now this was a case which had not been ^^provided for by 
law,’’ where a deaf man should be obliged to question a 
deaf man. 

Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been 
addressed to him, continued to stare intently at the judge, and 
made no reply. The judge, being deaf, and being in no way 
warned of the deafness of the accused, thought that the latter 
had answered, as ail accused do in general, and therefore he 
pursued, with his mechanical and stupid self-possession, — 

“ Very well. And your âge ? ’’ 

Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge 
supposed that it had been replied to, and continued, — 

^^Now, your profession ? ’’ 

Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, mean- 
while, to whisper together, and to exchange glances. 

“ That will do,’’ went on the imperturbable auditor, when he 
supposed that the accused had hnished his third reply. You 
are accused before us, primo, of nocturnal disturbance ; 
secundo, of a dishonorable act of violence upon the person of 
a foolish woman, in præjudicium meretricis ; tertio, of rébellion 
and disloyalty towards the archers of the police of our lord, 
the king. Explain yourself upon ail these points. — Clerk, 
hâve you written down what the prisoner has said thus far ? ” 


THE ANCIENT MAGISTRACY. 215 

At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the 
clerk’s table caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so 
contagions, so universal, that the two deaf men were forced 
to perceive it. Quasimodo turned round, shrugging his hump 
with disdain, while Master Florian, equally astonished, and 
supposing that the laughter of the spectators had been pro- 
voked by some irreverent reply from the accused, rendered 
visible to him by that shrug of the shoulders, apostrophized 
him indignantly, — 

“ You hâve uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter. 
l)o you know to whom you are speaking ? ” 

This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general 
merriment. It struck ail as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, 
that the wild laughter even attacked the sergeants of the Par- 
loir-aux-Bourgeois, a sort of pikemen, whose stupidity was part 
of their uniform. Quasimodo alone preserved his seriousness, 
for the good reason that he understood nothing of what was 
going on around him. The judge, more and more irritated, 
thought it his duty to continue in the same tone, hoping 
thereby to strike the accused with a terror which should react 
upon the audience, and bring it back to respect. 

So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving knave 
that you are, that you permit yourself to be lacking in respect 
towards the Auditor of the Châtelet, to the magistrate com- 
mitted to the popular police of Paris, charged with searching 
ont crimes, delinquencies, and evil conduct ; with controlling 
ail trades, and interdicting monopoly ; with maintaining the 
pavements ; with debarring the hucksters of chickens, poultry, 
and water-fowl ; of superintending the measuring of fagots and 
other sorts of wood ; of purging the city of mud, and the air 
of contagions maladies ; in a word, with attending continually 
to public affairs, without wages or hope of salary ! Do you 
know that I am called Florian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant 
to monsieur the provost, and, moreover, commissioner, inquis- 
itor, controller, and examiner, with equal power in provostship, 
bailiwick, préservation, and inferior court of judicature ? — 
There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man 
should stop. God knows where and when Master Florian 


216 


NOTBE-JDAME. 


would hâve landed, when thus launched at full speed in lofty élo- 
quence, if the low door at the extreme end of the room had not 
suddenly opened, and given entrance to the provost in person. 

At his entrance Master Florian did not stop short, but, mak- 
ing a half-turn on his heels, and aiming at the provost the 
harangue with which he had been withering Quasimodo a 
moment before, — 

‘‘Monseigneur,” said he, “I demand such penalty as you 
shall deem fitting against the prisoner here présent, for grave 
and aggravated offence against the court.” 

And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the 
great drops of sweat which fell from his brow and drenched, 
like tears, the parchments spread ont before him. Messire 
Kobert d’Estouteville frowned and made a gesture so imperi- 
ous and significant to Quasimodo, that the deaf man in some 
measure understood it. 

The provost addressed him with severity, “ What hâve you 
doue that you hâve been brought hither, knave ? ” 

The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his 
name, broke the silence which he habitually preserved, and 
replied, in a harsh and guttural voice, “ Quasimodo.” 

The reply matched the question so little that the wild 
laugh began to circulate once more, and Messire Eobert 
exclaimed, red with wrath, — 

“ Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave ? ” 

“Bellringer of Notre-Dame,” replied Quasimodo, supposing 
that what was required of him was to explain to the judge 
who he was. 

“Bellringer!” interpolated the provost, who had waked up 
early enough to be in a sufficiently bad temper, as we hâve 
said, not to require to hâve his fury inflamed by such strange 
responses. “Bellringer! ITl play you a chime of rods on 
your back through the squares of Paris ! Do you hear, 
knave ? ” 

“ If it is my âge that you wish to know,” said Quasimodo, 
“ I think that I shall be twenty at Saint Martin’s day.” 

This was too much ; the provost could no longer restrain 
himself, 


ANCIENT MAGISTRACT, 


217 


Ah ! you are scofïing at the provostship, wretch ! Mes- 
sieurs the sergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave 
to the pillory of the Grève, you will flog him, and turn 
him for an hour. He shall pay me for it, tête Dieu ! And I 
order that the présent judgment shall be cried, with the 
assistance of four sworn trumpeters, in the seven castel- 
lanies of the viscomty of Paris.’’ 

The clerk set to work incontinently to draw up the account 
of the sentence. 

Ventre Dieu ! ’tis well adjudged ! ” cried the little scholar, 
Jehan Prollo du Moulin, from his corner. 

The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on 
Quasimodo. “ I believe the knave said ^ Ventre Dieu ! ’ Clerk, 
add twelve deniers Parisian for the oath, and let the vestry 
of Saint Eustache hâve the half of it; I hâve a particular 
dévotion for Saint Eustache.” 

In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its ténor 
was simple and brief. The customs of the provostship and 
the viscomty had not yet been worked over by President 
Thibaut Paillet, and by Eoger Barmne, the king’s advocate ; 
they had not been obstructed, at that time, by that lofty 
hedge of quibbles and procedures, which the two jurisconsults 
plant ed there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Ail 
was clear, expéditions, explicit. One went straight to the 
point then, and at the end of every path there was immediately 
visible, without thickets and without turnings, the wheel, the 
gibbet, or the pillory. One at least knew whither one was 
going. 

The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who 
affixed his seal to it, and departed to pursue his round of the 
audience hall, in a frame of mind which seemed destined to 
fill ail the jails in Paris that day. Jehan Frollo and Eobin 
Poussepain laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodo gazed on 
the whole with an indifferent and astonished air. 

However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne 
was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the 
clerk felt himself nioved with pity for the poor wretch of a 
prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the 


218 


NOTRE-DAME. 


penalty, he approached as near the auditor’s ear as possible, 
and said, pointing to Quasimodo, ïhat man is deaf/’ 

He hoped that this coinmunity of infirmity would awaken 
Master Florian’s interest in behalf of the condemned man. 
But, in tbe first place, we bave already observed tliat Master 
Florian did not care to bave bis deafness noticed. In tbe 
next place, be was so bard of bearing tbat be did not catcb a 
single Word of wbat tbe clerk said to bim ; nevertbeless, be 
wisbed to bave tbe appearance of bearing, and replied, “ Ab ! 
ab ! tbat is different ; I did not know tbat. An bour more of 
tbe pillory, in tbat case.’’ 

And be signed tbe sentence tbus modified. 

’Tis well done,” said Bobin Poussepain, wbo cberisbed a 
grudge against Quasimodo. “ ïbat will teacb bim to bandle 
people rougbly.” 




CHAPTER II. 

THE RAT-HOLE. 

The reader must permit us to take hiin back to the Place 
de Grève, which we quitted yesterday with Gringoire, in 
order to follow la Esmeralda. 

It is ten o’clock in the morning ; everything is indicative of 
the day after a festival. The pavement is covered with rub- 
bish ; ribbons, rags, feathers from tufts of plumes, drops of 
wax from the torches, crumbs of ‘ the public feast. A goodly 
number of bourgeois are sauntering,” as we say, here and 
there, turning over with their feet the extinct brands of the 
bonfire, going into raptures in front of the Pillar House, over 
the memory of the fine hangings of the day before, and 
to-day staring at the nails that secured them a last pleasure. 
The venders of cider and beer are rolling their barrels among 
the groups. Some busy passers-by corne and go. The mer- 
chants converse and call to each other from the thresholds of 
their shops. The festival, the ambassadors, Coppenole, the 
Pope of the Pools, are in ail mouths; they vie with each 
other, each trying to criticise it best and laugh the most. 
And, meanwhile, four mounted sergeants, who hâve just 
posted themselves at the four sides of the pillory, hâve 
already concentrated around themselves a goodly proportion 
of the populace scattered on the Place, who condemn them- 
selves to immobility and fatigue in the hope of a small exe- 
cution. 


219 


220 


NOTBE-BAME. 


If the reader, after having contemplated this lively and 
noisy scene which. is being enacted in ail parts of the Place, 
will now transfer his gaze towards that ancient demi-Gothic, 
demi-Komanesque bouse of the Tour-Eoland, which forms the 
corner on the quay to the west, he will observe, at the angle 
of the façade, a large public breviary, with rich illuminations, 
protected from the rain by a little penthouse, and from thieves 
by a small grating, which, however, permits of the leaves being 
turned. Beside this breviary is a narrow, arched window, 
closed by two iron bars in the forni of a cross, and looking on 
the square ; the only opening which admits a small quantity 
of light and air to a little cell without a door, constructed on 
the ground-floor, in the thickness of the walls of the old house, 
and filled with a peace ail the more profound, with a silence 
ail the more gloomy, because a public place, the most populous 
and most noisy in Paris swarms and shrieks around it. 

This little cell had been celebrated in Paris for nearly three 
centuries, ever since Madame Eolande de la Tour-Eoland, in 
mourning for her father who died in the Crusades, had caused 
it to be hollowed out in the wall of her own house, in order 
to immure herself there forever, keeping of ail her palace 
only this lodging whose door was walled up, and whose win- 
dow stood open, winter and summer, giving ail the rest to the 
poor and to God. The afflicted damsel had, in fact, waited 
twenty years for death in this prématuré tomb, praying night 
and day for the soûl of her father, sleeping in ashes, without 
even a stone for a pillow, clothed in a black sack, and subsist- 
ing on the bread and water which the compassion of the 
passers-by led them to deposit on the ledge of her window, 
thus receiving charity after having bestowed it. At her death, 
at the moment when she was passing to the other sepulchre, 
she had bequeathed this one in perpetuity to afflicted women, 
mothers, widows, or maidens, who should wish to pray much 
for others or for themselves, and who should desire to inter 
themselves alive in a great grief or a great penance. The poor 
of her day had made her a fine funeral, with tears and béné- 
dictions; but, to their great regret, the pious maid had not 
been canonized, for lack of infiuence. Those among them who 


THE RAT-ROLE. 


221 


were a little inclined to impiety, had hoped that the matter 
might be accomplished in Paradise more easily than at Eome, 
and had frankly besought God, instead of the pope, in behalf 
of the deceased. The majority had contented themselves with 
holding the memory of Kolande sacred, and converting lier 
rags into relies. The city, on its side, had founded in honor 
of the damoiselle, a public breviary, which had been fastened 
near the window of the cell, in order that passers-by might 
hait there from time to time, were it only to pray ; that prayer 
might remind them of alms, and that the poor recluses, heir- 
esses of Madame Eolande’s vault, might not die outright of 
hunger and forgetfulness. 

Moreover, this sort of tomb was not so very rare a thing in 
the cities of the Middle Ages. One often encountered in 
the niost frequented Street, in the most crowded and noisy 
market, in the very middle, under the feet of the horses, 
under the wheels of the carts, as it were, a cellar, a well, a 
tiny walled and grated cabin, at the bottom of which a human 
being prayed night and day, voluntarily devoted to some eter- 
nal lamentation, to some great expiation. And ail the reflec- 
tions which that strange spectacle would awaken in us to-day ; 
that horrible cell, a sort of intermediary link between a house 
and the tomb, the cemetery and the city ; that living being 
eut off from the human community, and thenceforth reckoned 
among the dead ; that lamp consuming its last drop of oil in 
the darkness ; that remuant of life flickering in the grave ; 
that breath, that voice, that eternal prayer in a box of stone ; 
that face forever turned towards the other world ; that eye 
already ilium inated with another sun ; that ear pressed to the 
walls of a tomb ; that soûl a prisoner in that body ; that body 
a prisoner in that dungeon cell, and beneath that double 
envelope of flesh and granité, the murmur of that soûl in 
pain ; — nothing of ail this was perceived by the crowd. 

The piety of that âge, not very subtle nor much given to 
reasoning, did not see so many facets in an act of religion. 
It took the thing in the block, honored, venerated, hallowed 
the sacrifice at need, but did not analyze the sufîerings, and 
felt but moderate pity for them. It brought some pittance to 


222 


NOTBE-BAME. 


the misérable penitent from time to time, looked through the 
hole to see wliether he were still living, forgot bis name, 
hardly knew how many years ago he had begun to die, and to 
the stranger, who questioned them about the living skeleton 
who was perishing in that cellar, the neighbors replied simply, 
“ It is the recluse.” 

Everything was then viewed without metaphysics, without 
exaggeration, without magnifying glass, with the naked eye. 
The microscope had not y et been invented, either for things of 
matter or for things of the mind. 

Moreover, although people were but little surprised by it, 
the examples of this sort of cloistration in the hearts of cities 
were in truth frequent, as we hâve just said. There were in 
Paris a considérable number of these cells, for praying to God 
and doing penance; they were nearly ail occupied. It is true 
that the clergy did not like to hâve them empty, since that 
implied lukewarmness in believers, and that lepers were put 
into them when there were no penitents on hand. Besides the 
cell on the Grève, there was one at Montfaucon, one at the 
Charnier des Innocents, another I hardly know where, — at 
the Clichon House, I think ; others still at many spots where 
traces of them are found in traditions, in default of memo- 
rials. The University had also its own. On Mount Sainte- 
Geneviève a sort of Job of the Middle Ages, for the space of 
thirty years, chanted the seven penitential psalms on a dung- 
hill at the bottom of a cistern, beginning anew when he had 
finished, singing loudest at night, magna voce per umbras^ and 
to-day, the antiquary fancies that he hears his voice as he 
enters the Eue du Puits-qui-parle — the Street of the “ Speak- 
ing Well.” 

To confine ourselves to the cell in the Tour-Eoland, we must 
say that it had never lacked recluses. After the death of 
Madame Eoland, it had stood vacant for a year or two, 
though rarely. Many women had corne thither to mourn, 
until their death, for relatives, lovers, faults. Parisian mal- 
ice, which thrusts its finger into everything, even into things 
which concern it the least, afïlrmed that it had beheld but 
few widows there. 


THE RAT-HOLE. 


223 


In accordance with the fashion of the epoch, a Latin in- 
scription on the wall indicated to the learned passer-by the 
pions purpose of this cell. The custom was retained nntil 
the middle of the sixteenth century of explaining an édifice 
by a brief device inscribed above the door. Thus, one still 
reads in France, above the wicket of the prison in the seigno- 
rial mansion of Tourville, Sileto et spera ; in Ireland, beneath 
the armorial bearings which surmount the grand door to 
Fortescue Castle, Forte scutum, salus dueum ; in England, 
over the principal entrance to the hospitable mansion of the 
Earls Cowper : Tuum est. At that time every édifice was a 
thought. 

As there was no door to the walled cell of the Tour-Eoland, 
these two words had been carved in large Eoman capitals 
over the window, — 

TU, ORA. 

And this caused the people, whose good sense does not per- 
ceive so much refinement in things, and likes to translate 
Ludovico Magno by Porte Saint-Denis, to give to this dark, 
gloomy, damp cavity, the name of “ The Eat-Hole. An 
explanation less sublime, perhaps, than the other j but, on the 
other hand, more picturesque. 




CHAPTER III. 

HISTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE. 

At the epoch. of this history, the cell in the Tour-Roland 
was occnpied. If the reader desires to knqw by whom, he 
has only to lend an ear ta the conversation of three worthy 
gossips, who, at the moment when we hâve directed his at- 
tention to the Rat-Hole, were directing their steps towards 
the same spot, coming np along the water’s edge from the 
Châtelet, towards the Grève. 

Two of these women were dressed like good bourgeoises of 
Paris. Their fine white rnffs ; their petticoats of linsey- 
woolsey, striped red and bine ; their white knitted stockings, 
with docks embroidered in colors, well drawn upon their 
legs ; the sqnare-toed shoes of tawny leather with black soles, 
and, above ail, their headgear, that sort of tinsel horn, loaded 
down with ribbons and laces, which the women of Champagne 
still wear, in company with the grenadiers of the impérial 
gnard of Russia, announced that they belonged to that class 
of wealthy merchant’s wives which holds the iniddle groimd 
between what the lackeys call a woman and what they term a 
lady. They wore neither rings nor gold crosses, and it was 
easy to see that, in their case, this did not proceed from pov- 
erty, but simply from fear of being fined. Their companion 
was attired in very mnch the same manner ; but there was 
that indescribable something about her dress and bearing 
which suggested the wife of a provincial notary. One could 
see, by the way in which her girdle rose above her hips, that 


mSTOBY OF A LEAVÈNÈD CAKE OF MAIZE. 225 

she had not been long in Paris. Add to this a plaited tucker, 
knots of ribbon on ber shoes — and that the stripes of ber 
petticoat ran borizontally instead of vertically, and a tbou- 
sand otber enormities wbicb sbocked good taste. 

Tbe two first walked witb tbat step peculiar to Parisian 
ladies, sbowing Paris to woinen from tbe country. Tbe pro- 
vincial beld by tbe band a big boy, wbo beld in bis a large, 
flat cake. 

We regret to be obliged to add, that, owing to the rigor of 
tbe season, be was using bis tongue as a handkerchief. 

The child was making them drag biin along, non passibus 
œqiiis, as Virgil says, and stumbling at every moment, to the 
great indignation of bis mother. It is true that be was look- 
ing at bis cake more than at the pavement. Some serions 
motive, no doubt, prevented bis biting it (the cake), for be 
contented bimself witb gazing tenderly at it. But tbe mother 
should bave rather taken charge of tbe cake. It was cruel to 
make a Tantalus of the chubby-cbeeked boy. 

Meanwhile, the three demoiselles (for the name of dames 
was then reserved for noble women) were ail talking at once. 

Let us make haste. Demoiselle Mabiette,’^ said tbe young- 
est of the three, wbo was also tbe largest, to the provincial, 

I greatly fear tbat we shall arrive too late ; tbey told us at 
the Châtelet that tbey were going to take bim directly to 
the pillory.’’ 

“ Ah, bah ! what are you saying. Demoiselle Oudarde Mus- 
nier ? interposed tbe otber Parisienne. Tbere are two 
hours y et to tbe pillory. We bave time enough. Hâve you 
ever seen any one pilloried, my dear Mahiette ? ” 

‘‘Yes,” said tbe provincial, ^^at Beims.’’ 

Ah, bah ! What is your pillory at Eeims ? A misérable 
cage into wbicb only peasants are turned. A great affair, 
truly ! ’’ 

^^Only peasants!’’ said Mahiette, ^^at tbe clotb market in 
Keims ! We bave seen very fine criminals tbere, wbo bave 
killed their father and mother ! Peasants ! For what do you 
take us, Gervaise ? ” 

It is certain that tbe provincial was on the point of taking 


226 


NOTRE-DAME. 


offence, for the lionor of her pillory. Fortunately, that dis- 
creet damoiselle, Oudarde Musnier, turned the conversation in 
time. 

the way, Damoiselle Mahiette, what say y ou to our 
riemish Ambassadors ? Hâve you as fine ones at Eeims ? 

“ I admit/’ replied Mahiette, that it is only in Paris that 
such Flemings can be seen.” 

Did you see among the embassy, that big ambassador who 
is a hosier ? ” asked Oudarde. 

‘^Yes/’ said Mahiette. ^^He has the eye of a Saturn.” 

And the big fellow whose face resembles a bare belly ? ” 
resumed Gervaise. ‘^And the little one, with small eyes 
framed in red eyelids, pared down and slashed up like a thistle 
head?” 

^^’Tis their horses that are worth seeing/’ said Oudarde, 
caparisoned as they are after the fashion of their country ! ” 

Ah my dear,” interrupted pravincial Mahiette, assuming 
in her turn an air of superiority, what would you say then, 
if you had seen in ’61, at the consécration at Eeims, eighteen 
years ago, the horses of the princes and of the king’s com- 
pany ? Housings and caparisons of ail sorts ; some of damask 
cloth, of fine cloth of gold, furred with sables ; others of vel- 
vet, furred with ermine ; others ail embellished with gold- 
smith’s Work and large bells of gold and silver ! And what 
money that had cost ! And what handsome boy pages rode 
upon them ! ” 

That,” replied Oudarde dryly, “ does not prevent the Flem- 
ings having very fine horses, and having had a superb supper 
yesterday with monsieur, the provost of the merchants, at the 
Hôtel-de-Yille, where they were served with comfits and 
hippocras, and spices, and other singularities.” 

“ What are you saying, neighbor ! ” exclaimed Gervaise. 
^Ht was with monsieur the cardinal, at the Petit Bourbon 
that they supped.” 

Hot at ail. At the Hôtel-de-Ville. 

Yes, indeed. At the Petit Bourbon ! ” 

^Ht was at the Hôtel-de-Ville,” retorted Oudarde sharply, 
^^and Dr. Scourable addressed them a harangue in Latin, 


niSTOEY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE. 227 

whicli pleased them greatly. My husband, who is sworn 
bookseller told me so.’^ 

“ It was at the Petit Bourbon,” replied Gervaise, with no 
less spirit, and this is wbat monsieur the cardinabs procura- 
tor presented to them : twelve double quarts of hippocras, 
white, claret, and red; twenty-four boxes of double Lyons 
marchpane, gilded ; as many torches, worth two livres a piece ; 
and six demi-queues * of Beaune wine, white and claret, the 
best that could be found. I hâve it from my husband, who is 
a cinquantenier, f at the Parloir-aux Bourgeois, and who was 
this morning comparing the Plemish ambassadors with those 
of Prester John and the Emperor of Trebizond, who came 
from Mesopotamia to Paris, under the last king, and who wore 
rings in their ears.” 

So true is it that they supped at the Hôtel-de-Ville,” re- 
plied Oudarde^ but little affected by this catalogue, that such 
a triumph of viands and comfits has never been seen.” 

I tell y ou that they were served by Le Sec, sergeant of the 
City, at the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, and that that is where 
you are mistaken.” 

At the Hôtel-de-Ville, I tell you ! ” 

At the Petit-Bourbon, my dear ! and they had illuminated 
with magic glasses the word Hope, which is written on the 
grand portai.” 

At the Hôtel-de-Ville 1 At the Hôtel-de-Ville ! And Hus- 
son-le-Voir played the flûte ! ” 

I tell you, no ! ” 

I tell you, yes ! ” 

I say, no ! ” 

Plump and worthy Oudarde was preparing to retort, and 
the quarrel might, perhaps, hâve proceeded to a pulling of 
caps, had not Mahiette suddenly exclaimed, — Look at those 
people assembled yonder at the end of the bridge ! There is 
something in their midst that they are looking at ! ” 

In sooth,” said Gervaise, “ I hear the sounds of a tambour- 
ine. I believe ’tis the little Esmeralda, who plays her mum- 

* A Queue was a cask which held a hogshead and a half. 
t A captain of fifty men. 


228 


NOTEE-BAMÉ, 


meries with. lier goat. Eh, be quick, Mabiette ! redouble 
your pace and drag along your boy. You are corne hither to 
visit the curiosities of Paris. You saw tbe Elemings yester- 
day ; you must see the gypsy to-day.’’ 

“ The gypsy ! ’’ said Mabiette, suddenly retracing ber steps, 
and clasping ber son’s arm forcibly. God preserve me from 
it ! Sbe would steal my cbild from me ! Corne, Eustacbe ! ’’ 
And sbe set ont on a run along tbe quay towards tbe Grève, 
until sbe bad left tbe bridge far bebind ber. In tbe mean- 
wbile, tbe cbild wbom sbe was dragging after ber fell upon 
bis knees ; sbe balted breatbless. Oudarde and Gervaise 
rejoined ber. 

Tbat gypsy steal your cbild from you ! ’’ said Gervaise. 

Tbat’s a singular freak of yours ! 

Mabiette sbook ber bead witb a pensive air. 

Tbe singular point is,’^ observed Oudarde, “ tbat la sachette 
bas tbe saine idea about tbe Egyptian woman.’^ 

Wbat is la sachette ? ’’ asked Mabiette. 

Hé ! said Oudarde, Sister Gudule.’’ 

And wbo is Sister Gudule ? ’’ persisted Mabiette. 

You are certainly ignorant of ail but your Reims, not to 
know tbat ! replied Oudarde. ’Tis tbe recluse of tbe Eat- 
Hole.” 

Wbat ! ” demanded Mabiette, tbat poor wornan to wbom 
we are carrying tbis cake ? ’’ 

Oudarde nodded affirmatively. 

‘‘ Precisely. You will see ber presently at ber window on 
tbe Grève. Sbe bas tbe same opinion as yourself of tbese 
vagabonds of Egypt, wbo play tbe tambourine and tell for- 
tunes to tbe public. Ho one knows wbence cornes ber borror 
of tbe gypsies and Egyptians. But you, Mabiette — wby do 
you run so at tbe mere sigbt of tbem ? ’’ 

Ob ! ” said Mabiette, seizing ber cbild’s round bead in botb 
bands, I don’t want tbat to bappen to me wbicb bappened to 
Paquette la Cbantefleurie.’’ 

Ob ! you must tell us tbat story, my good Mabiette,’’ said 
Gervaise, taking ber arm. 

Gladly,” replied Mabiette ; but you must be ignorant of 


m^Tonr of a leavenef cake of maize. 229 


ail but your Paris not to know that ! I will tell you then (but 
’tis not necessary for us to hait that I may tell you the taie), 
that Paquettè la Chantefleurie was a pretty maid of eighteen 
when I was one myself, thaf is to say, eighteen years ago, and 
’tis her own fault if she is not to-day, like me, a good, plump, 
fresh mother of six and thirty, with a husband and a son. 
However, after the âge of fourteen, it was too late ! Well, she 
was the daughter of Guybertant, minstrel of the barges at 
Reims, the same who had played before King Charles VII., at 
his coronation, when he descended our river Vesle from Sillery 
to Muison, when Madame the Maid of Orléans was also in the 
boat. The old father died when Paquette was still a mere 
child ; she had then no one but her mother, the sister of M. 
Pradon, master-brazier and coppersmith in Paris, Rue Parin- 
Garlin, who died last year. You see she was of good family. 
The mother was a good simple woman, unfortunately, and she 
taught Paquette nothing but a bit of embroidery and toy- 
making which did not prevent the little one from growing 
very large and remaining very poor. They both dwelt at 
Reims, on the river front, Rue de Folle-Peine. Mark this : 
For I believe it was this which brought misfortune to Paquette. 
In ’61, the year of the coronation of our King Louis XI. whom 
God préservé ! Paquette was so gay and so pretty that she 
was called everywhere by no other name than la Chantefleurie 
— blossoming song. Poor girl ! She had handsome teeth, she 
was fond of laughing and displaying them. Now, a maid who 
loves to laugh is on the road to weeping; handsome teeth 
ruin handsome eyes. So she was la Chantefleurie. She and 
her mother earned a precarious living ; they had been very 
destitute since the death of the minstrel ; their embroidery 
did not bring them in more than six farthings a week, which 
does not amount to quite two eagle liards. Where were the 
days when Father Guybertant had earned twelve sous Pari- 
sian, in a single coronation, with a song ? One winter (it was 
in that same year of ’61), when the two women had neither 
fagots nor firewood, it was very cold, which gave la Chante- 
fieurie such a fine color that the men called her Paquette ! * 
* Ox-eye daisy . 


230 


NOTBE-BAME, 


and many called lier Pâquerette ! * and slie was ruined. — 
Eustache, just let me see y ou bite that cake if y ou dare ! — 
We immediately perceived that she was ruined; one Sunday 
when she came to church with a gold cross about her neck. 
At fourteen years of âge ! do you see ? First it was the 
young Vicomte de Cormontreuil, who has his bell tower three 
leagues distant from Eeims ; then Messire Henri de Trian- 
court, equerry to the King ; then less than that, Chiart de 
Beaulion, sergeant-at-arms ; then, still descending, Guery 
Aubergeon, carver to the King ; then, Macé de Frépus, barber 
to monsieur the dauphin ; then, Thévenin le Moine, King’s 
cook ; then, the men growing continually younger and less 
noble, she fell to Guillaume Kacine, minstrel of the hurdy^ 
gurdy and to Thierry de Mer, lamplighter. Then, poor Chante- 
fleurie, she belonged to every one : she had reached the last 
sou of her gold piece. What shall I say to you, my damoi- 
selles ? At the coronation, in the same year, ^61, Twas she 
who made the bed of the king of the debauchees ! In the 
same year ! 

Maîiiette sighed, and wiped away a tear which trickled from 
her eyes. 

This is no very extraordinary history,’’ said Gervaise, and 
in the whole of it I see nothing of any Egyptian women or 
children/’ 

Patience ! ” resumed Mahiette ; you will see one child. 
— In ’66, ’twill be sixteen years ago this month, at Sainte- 
Paule’s day, Paquette was brought to bed of a little girl. The 
unhappy créature ! it was a great joy to her ; she had long 
wished for a child. Her mother, good woman, who had ne ver 
known what to do except to shut her eyes, her mother was 
dead. Paquette had no longer any one to love in the world 
or any one to love her. La Chantefleurie had been a poor 
créature during the five years since her fall. She was alone, 
alone in this life, fingers were pointed at her, she was hooted 
at in the Street s, beaten by the sergeants, jeered at by’the lit- 
tle boys in rags. And then, twenty had arrived : and twenty 
is an old âge for amorous women. Folly began to bring her 
* Easter daisy. 


UI8T0RY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE. 231 

in no more than lier trade of embroidery in former days ; for 
every wrinkle tliat came, a crown fled ; winter became hard to 
her once more, wood became rare again in ber brazier, and 
bread in her cupboard. She could no longer work because, 
in becoming voluptuous, she had grown lazy ; and she suffered 
much more because, in growing lazy, she had become voluptii- 
ous. At least, that is the way in which monsieur the cure of 
Saint-Remy explains why these women are colder and hungrier 
than other poor women, when they are old.’’ 

Yes,” remarked Gervaise, but the gypsies ? ” 

“ One moment, Gervaise ! ” said Oudarde, whose attention 
was less impatient. What would be left for the end if ail 
were in the beginning ? Continue, Mahiette, I entreat you. 
That poor Chantefleurie ! 

Mahiette went on. 

So she was very sad, very misérable, and furrowed her 
cheeks with tears. But in the midst of her shame, her folly, 
her debauchery, it seemed to her that she should be less wild, 
less shameful, less dissipated, if there were something or some 
one in the world whom she could love, and who could love 
her. It was necessary that it should be a child, because only 
a child could be sufficiently innocent for that. She had recog- 
nized this fact after having tried to love a thief, the only man 
who wanted her; but after a short time, she perceived that 
the thief despised her. Those women of love require either 
a lover or a child to fill their hearts. Otherwise, they are 
very unhappy. As she could not hâve a lover, she turned 
wholly towards a desire for a child, and as she had not ceased 
to be pions, she made her constant prayer to the good God 
for it. So the good God took pity on her, and gave her a 
little daughter. I will not speak to you of her joy ; it was a 
fury of tears, and caresses, and kisses. She nursed her child 
herself, made swaddling-bands for it ont of her coverlet, the 
only one which she had on her bed, and no longer felt either 
cold or hunger. She became beautiful once more, in consé- 
quence of it. An old maid makes a young mother. Gallantry 
claimed her once more; men came to see la Chantefleurie; 
she found customers again for her merchandise, and out of ail 


232 


NOTRE-DAME. 


these horrors she made baby clothes, caps and bibs, bodices 
witb shoulder-straps of lace, and tiny bonnets of satin, with- 
out even thinking of buying herself another coverlet. — 
Master Eustacbe, I bave already told you not to eat that cake. 
— It is certain that little Agnès, that was the child’s name, a 
baptismal name, for it was a long time since la Chantefleurie 
had had any surnâme — it is certain that that little one was 
more swathed in ribbons and embroideries than a danphi- 
ness of Dauphiny ! Among other things, she had a pair 
of little shoes, the like of which King Louis XI. certainly 
never had ! Her mother had stitched and embroidered them 
herself; she had lavished on them ail the delicacies of her 
art of embroideress, and ail the embellishments of a robe for 
the good Virgin. They certainly were the two prettiest little 
pink shoes that coiild be seen. They were no longer than my 
thumb, and one had to see the child’s little feet corne ont of 
them, in order to believe that they had been able to get into 
them. ’Tis true that those little feet were so small, so pretty, 
so rosy ! rosier than the satin of the shoes ! When you hâve 
children, Oudarde, you will find that there is nothing prettier 
than those little hands and feet.” 

ask no better,” said Oudarde with a sigh, ^^but I am 
waiting until it shall suit the good pleasure of M. Andry 
Musnier.” 

However, Paquette’s child had more that was pretty about 
it besides its feet. I saw her when she was only four months 
old ; she Avas a love ! She had eyes larger than her mouth, 
and the most'charming black hair, which already curled. She 
would hâve been a magnificent brunette at the âge of sixteen ! 
Her mother became more crazy over her every day. She 
kissed her, caressed her, tickled her, washed her, decked her 
ont, devoured her ! She lost her head over her, she thanked 
God for her. Her pretty, little rosy feet above ail were an 
endless source of wonderment, they were a delirium of joy ! 
She was always pressing her lips to them, and she could never 
recover from her amazement at their smallness. She put 
them into the tiny shoes, took them out, admired them, mar- 
velled at them, looked at the light through them, Avas curions 


HISTOBY OF A LEAVENEB CAKE OF MAIZE. 233 

to see them try to walk on her bed, and would gladly bave 
passed her life on her knees, pntting on and taking off the 
shoes from those feet, as though they had been those of an 
Infant Jésus/’ 

The taie is fair and good,” said Gervaise in a low tone ; 
“but where do gypsies corne into ail that ? ” 

“ Here/’ replied Mahiette. One day there arrived in 
Keims a very queer sort of people. They were beggars and 
vagabonds who were roaming over the country, led by their 
duke and their counts. They were browned by exposure to 
the Sun, they had closely curling hair, and silver rings in 
their ears. The women were still uglier than the men. They 
had blacker faces, which were always uncovered, a misérable 
frock on their bodies, an old cloth woven of cords bound 
upon their shoulder, and their hair hanging like the tail of a 
horse. The children who scrambled between their legs would 
hâve frightened as many monkeys. A band of excommuni- 
cates. Ail these persons came direct from lower Egypt to 
Eeims through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was 
said, and had prescribed to them as penance to roam through 
the World for seven years, without sleeping in a bed ; and so 
they were called penancers, and smelt horribly. It appears 
that they had formerly been Saracens, which was why they 
believed in Jupiter, and claimed ten livres of Tournay from 
ail archbishops, bishops, and mitred abbots with croziers. A 
bull from the Pope empowered them to do that. They came 
to Eeims to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers, 
and the Emperor of Germany. You can readily imagine that 
no more was needed to cause the entrance to the town to be 
forbidden them. Then the whole band camped with good 
grâce outside the gâte of Braine, on that hill where stands a 
mill, beside the cavities of the ancient chalk pits. And every- 
body in Eeims vied with his neighbor in going to see them. 
They looked at your hand, and told you marjjellous prophecies ; 
they were equal to predicting to Judas that he would become 
Pope. Hevertheless, ugly rumors were in circulation in 
regard to them ; about children stolen, purses eut, and human 
flesh devoured. The wise people said to the foolish : Don’t 


234 


NOTRE-DAME. 


go there !” and then went themselves on the sly. It was an 
infatuation. The fact is, that they said things lit to astonisli 
a cardinal. Mothers triumphed greatly over their little ones 
after the Egyptians had read in their hands ail sorts of inar- 
vels written in pagan and in Turkish. One had an emperor ; 
another, a pope ; another, a captain. Poor Chantelieurie was 
seized with curiosity ; she wished to know about herself, and 
whether her pretty little Agnès would not become some day 
Empress of Armenia, or something else. So she carried her to 
the Egyptians ; and the Egyptian women fell to admiring the 
child, and to caressing it, and to kissing it with their black 
mouths, and to marvelling over its little hand, alas ! to the 
great joy of the mother. They were especially enthusiastic 
over her pretty feet and shoes. The child was not yet a year 
old. She already lisped a little, laughed at her mother like a 
little mad thing, was plump and quite round, and possessed a 
thousand charmiiig little gestures of the angels of paradise. 

She was very inuch frightened by the Egyptians, and wept. 
But her mother kissed her more warmly and went away en- 
chanted with the good fortune which the soothsayers had fore- 
told for her Agnès. She was to be a beauty, virtuous, a queen. 
So she returned to her attic in the Eue Eolle-Peine, very 
proud of bearing with her a queen. The next day she took 
advantage of a moment when the child was asleep on her bed, 
(for they always slept together), gently left the door a little 
way open, and ran to tell a neighbor in the Eue de la Séches- 
serie, that the day would corne when her daughter Agnès 
would be served at table by the King of England and the 
Archduke of Ethiopia, and a ^.andred other marvels. On 
her return, hearing no cries on the staircase, she said to her- 
self : ^ Good ! the child is still asleep ! ’ She found her door 
wider open than she had left it, but she entered, poor mother, 
and ran to the bed. — The child was no longer there, the 
place was empty. • E’othing remained of the child, but one of 
her pretty little shoes. She flew out of the room, dashed 
down the stairs, and began to beat her head against the wall, 
crying : ‘ My child ! who has my child ? Who has taken my 
child ? ^ The Street was deserted, the house isolated 5 no 


HISTORY OF A LEAVENFD CAKE OF MAIZE. 235 


one could tell lier anything about it. She went about the 
town, searched ail the streets, ran liither and thither the 
whole day long, wild, beside herself, terrible, snuffing at doors 
and Windows like a wild beast which has lost its young. She 
was breathless, dishevelled, frightful to see, and there was a 
lire in her eyes which dried her tears. She stopped the 
passers-by and cried : ^ My daughter ! my daughter ! my 
pretty little daughter ! If any one will give me back my 
daughter, I will be his servant, the servant of his dog, and he 
shall eat my heart if he will.’ She met M. le Curé of Saint- 
E,emy, and said to him : ^ Monsieur, I will till the earth with 
my linger-nails, but give me back my child ! ’ It was heart- 
rending, Oudarde ; and I saw a very hard man, Master Ponce 
Lacabre, the procurator, weep. Ah ! poor mother ! In the 
evening she returned home. During her absence, a neighbor 
had seen two gypsies ascend up to it with a bundle in their 
arms, then descend again, after closing the door. After their 
departure, something like the cries of a child were heard in 
Paquette’s room. The mother, burst into shrieks of laughter, 
ascended the stairs as though on wings, and entered. — A 
frightful thing to tell, Oudarde ! Instead of her pretty little 
Agnès, so rosy and so fresh, who was a gift of the good God, a 
sort of hideous little monster, lame, one-eyed, deformed, was 
crawling and squalling over the floor. She hid her eyes in 
horror. ‘Oh!’ said she, ‘hâve the witches transformed my 
daughter into this horrible animal ? ’ They hastened to carry 
away the little club-foot ; he would hâve driven her mad. It 
was the monstrous child of some gypsy woman, who had given 
herself to the devil. He appeared to be about four years old, 
and talked a language which was no human tongue ; there 
were words in it which were impossible. La Chantefleuri' 
flung herself upon the little shoe, ail that remained to her o 
ail that she loved. She remained so long motionless over it. 
mute, and without breath, that they thought she was dead. 
Suddenly she trembled ail over, covered her relie with furious 
kisses, and burst out sobbing as though her heart were broken. 
I assure you that we were ail weeping also. She said : ‘ Oh, 
my little daughter ! my pretty little daughter ! where art 


236 


NOTRE-DAME. 


thou ? ’ — and it wrung your very heart. I weep still when 1 
tliink of it. Our children are the marrow of our bones, you 
see. — My poor Eustacbel thou art so fair! — If you only 
knew how nice he is ! yesterday he said to me : ^ I want to be 
a gendarme, that I do.’ Oh ! my Eustache ! if I were to lose 
thee ! — AU at once la Chantefleurie rose, and set out to run 
through Eeims, screaming : ^ To the gypsies’ camp ! to the 
gypsies’ camp ! Police, to burn the witches ! ’ The gypsies 
were gone. It was pitch dark. They could not be folio wed. 
On the morrow, two leagues from Keims, on a heath between 
Gueux and Tilloy, the remains of a large lire were found, 
some ribbons which had belonged to Paquette’s child, drops of 
blood, and the dung of a ram. The night just past had been 
a Saturday. There was no longer any doubt that the Egyp- 
tians had held their Sabbath on that heath, and that they had 
devoured the child in company with Beelzebub, as the practice 
is among the Mahometans. When La Chantefleurie learned 
these horrible things, she did not weep, she moved her lips as 
though to speak, but could not. On the morrow, her hair was 
gray. On the second day, she had disappeared. 

’Tis in truth, a frightful taie,” said Oudarde, and one 
which would make even a Burgundian weep.” 

^^I am no longer surprised,” added Gervaise, ^^that fear of 
the gypsies should spur you on so sharply.” 

“And you did ail the better,” resumed Oudarde, “to flee 
with your Eustache just now, since these also are gypsies 
from Poland.” 

“ISTo,” said Gervais, “’tis said that they corne from Spain 
and Catalonia.” 

“Catalonia? ’tis possible,” replied Oudarde. “Pologne, 
Catalogne, Valogne, I always confound those three provinces, 
One thing is certain, that they are gypsies.” 

“ Who certainly,” added Gervaise, “ hâve teeth long enough 
to eat little children. I should not be surprised if la Sméralda 
ate a little of them also, though she prétends to be dainty. 
Her white goat knows tricks that are too malicious for there 
not to be some impiety underneath it ail.” 

Mahiette walked on in silence. She was absorbed in that 


HISTORY O F A LFAVFJVFD CA KF OF MAIZE. 237 


revery which is, in some sort, the continuation of a mournful 
taie, and which ends only after having communicated the 
émotion, froin vibration to vibration, even to the very last 
fibres of the heart. Nevertheless, Gervaise addressed her, 
“ And did they ever learn what became of la Chantefleurie ? ” 
Mahiette made no reply. Gervaise repeated her question, and 
shook her arm, calling her by name. Mahiette appeared to 
awaken from her thoughts. 

What became of la Chantefleurie ? ’’ she said, repeating 
mechanically the words whose impression was still fresh in 
her ear ; then, making an effort to recall her attention to the 
meaning of her words, Ah ! ” she continued briskly, no 
one ever found ont/’ 

She added, after a pause, — 

Some said that she had been seen to quit Keims at night- 
fall by the Fléchembault gâte ; others, at daybreak, by the old 
Basée gâte. A poor man found her gold cross hanging on the 
stone cross in the field where the fair is held. It was that 
ornament which had wrought her ruin, in ’61. It was a gift 
from the handsome Vicomte de Cormontreuil, her first lover. 
Paquette had never been willing to part with it, wretched as 
she had been. She had clung to it as to life itself. So, when 
we saw^ that cross abandoned, we ail thought that she was 
dead. Nevertheless, there were people of the Cabaret les 
Vantes, who said that they had seen her pass along the road 
to Paris, walking on the pebbles with her bare feet. But, 
in that case, she must hâve gone out through the Porte de 
Vesle, and ail this does not agréé. Or, to speak more truly, 
I belle ve that she actually did départ by the Porte de Vesle, 
but departed from this world.’^ 

I do not understand you,” said Gervaise. 

‘^La Vesle,’’ replied Mahiette, with a melancholy smile, ‘Gs 
the river.” 

Poor Chantefleurie ! ” said Oudarde, with a shiver, — 
drowned ! ” 

^^Drowned!” resumed Mahiette; ^^who could hâve told 
good Father Guybertant, when he passed under the bridge of 
Tingueux with the current, singing in his barge, that one day 


238 


NOTBE-BAME. 


his dear little Paquette would also pass beneath tbat bridge, 
but witbout song or boat. 

And tbe little sboe ? asked Gervaise. 

^^Disappeared witb tbe motber,” replied Mabiette. 

Poor little sboe ! said Oudarde. 

Oudarde, a big and tender woman, would bave been well 
pleased to sigb in company witb Mabiette. But Gervaise, 
more curious, bad not finisbed ber questions. 

“ And tbe monster ? ’’ sbe said suddenly, to Mabiette. 

Wbat monster ? ’’ inquired tbe latter. 

Tbe little gypsy monster left by tbe sorceresses in 
Cbantefleurie’s cbamber, in excbange for ber daugbter. Wbat 
did you do witb it ? I bope you drowned it also.’^ 

^‘ISTo.” replied Mabiette. 

^AVbat ? You burned it tben ? In sootb, tbat is more 
just. A witcb cbild ! ” 

“ISTeitber tbe one nor tbe otber, Gervaise. Monseigneur tbe 
arcbbisbop interested bimself in tbe cbild of Egypt, exorcised 
it, blessed it, removed tbe devil carefully from its body, and 
sent it to Paris, to be exposed on tbe wooden bed at Notre- 
Dame, as a foundling.” 

Tbose bisbops ! ’’ grumbled Gervaise, because tbey are 
learned, tbey do notbing like anybody else. I just put it to 
you, Oudarde, tbe idea of placing tbe devil among tbe found- 
lings ! For tbat little monster was assuredly tbe devil. 
Well, Mabiette, wbat did tbey do witb it in Paris ? I am 
quite sure tbat no charitable persoii wanted it.’^ 

I do not know,” replied tbe Eémoise ; “ Twas just at tbat 
time tbat my busband bougbt tbe office of notary, at Beru, 
two leagues from tbe town, and we were no longer occupied 
witb tbat story ; besides, in front of Beru, stand tbe two bills 
of Cernay, wbicb bide tbe towers of tbe catbedral in Eeims 
from view.’’ 

Wbile cbatting tbus, tbe tbree wortby bourgeoises bad ar- 
rived at tbe Place de Grève. In tbeir absorption, tbey bad 
passed tbe public breviary of tbe Tour-Eoland witbout stop- 
ping, and took tbeir way mecbanically towards tbe pillory 
around wbicb tbe tbrong was growing more dense witb every 


HISTORY OF A LE AVEN ED CAKE OF MAIZE. 239 

moment. It is probable that the spectacle wliich at that 
moment attracted ail looks in that direction, would bave made 
them forget completely the Rat-Hole, and the hait which 
they intended to make there, if big Eustache, six years of âge, 
whom Mahiette was dragging along by the hand, had not 
abruptly recalled the object to them : “ Mother,” said he, as 
though some instinct warned him that the Kat-Hole was 
behind him, ‘‘ can I eat the cake now ? 

If Eustache had been more adroit, that is to say, less 
greedy, he would hâve continued to wait, and would only hâve 
hazarded that simple question, “ Mother, can I eat the cake, 
now ? on their return to the University, to Master Andry 
Musnier’s, Eue Madame la Valence, when he had the two 
arms of the Seine and the five bridges of the city between the 
Eat-Hole and the cake. 

This question, highly imprudent at the moment when 
Eustache put it, aroused Mahiette’s attention. 

“By the way,’^ she exclaimed, “we are forgetting the 
recluse ! Show me the Eat-Hole, that I may carry her her 
cake.’^ 

“ Immediately,’’ said Oudarde, “ ’tis a charity.’^ 

But this did not suit Eustache. 

“ Stop ! my cake ! ” said he, rubbing both ears alternatively 
with his shoulders, which, in such cases, is the suprême sign 
of discontent. 

The tlïree women retraced their steps, and, on arriving in 
the vicinity of the Tour-Eoland, Oudarde said to the other 
two, — 

“ We must not ail three gaze into the hole at once, for fear 
of alarming the recluse. Do you two prétend to read the 
Dominus in the breviary, while I thrust my nose into the 
aperture ; the recluse knows me a little. I will give you 
warning when you can approach.^’ 

She proceeded alone to the window. At the moment when 
she looked in, a profound pity was depicted on ail her feat- 
ures, and her frank, gay visage altered its expression and 
color as abruptly as though it had passed from a ray of sun- 
light to a ray of moonlight ; her eye became humid; her 


240 


NOTRE-DAME. 


moutli contracted, like that of a person on the point of 
weeping. A moment later, she laid lier finger on her lips, 
and made a sign to Mahiette to draw near and look. 

Mahiette, much tonched, stepped np in silence, on tiptoe, as 
tkough approacMng the bedside of a dying person. 

It was, in fact, a melancholy spectacle which presented 
itself to the eyes of the two women, as they gazed throngh 
the grating of the Rat-Hole, neither stirring nor breathing. 

The cell was small, broader than it was long, with an arched 
ceiling, and viewed from within, it bore a considérable resem- 
blance to the interior of a huge bishop’s mitre. On the bare 
flagstones which formed the floor, in one corner, a woman 
was sitting, or rather, cronching. Her chin rested on her 
knees, which her crossed arms pressed forcibly to her breast. 
Thns donbled up, clad in a brown sack, which enveloped her 
entirely in large folds, her long, gray hair pnlled over in 
front, falling over her face and along her legs nearly to her 
feet, she presented, at the first glance, only a strange form 
outlined against the dark backgronnd of the cell, a sort of 
dusky triangle, which the ray of daylight falling throngh 
the opening, eut roughly into two shades, the one sombre, the 
other illuminated. It was one of those spectres, half light, 
half shadow, such as one beholds in dreams and in the 
extraordinary work of Goya, pale, motionless, sinister, crouch- 
ing over a tomb, or leaning against the grating of a prison 
cell. 

It was neither a woman, nor a man, nor a living being, nor 
a definite form ; it was a figure, a sort of vision, in which the 
real and the fantastic intersected each other, like darkness 
and day. It was with difficulty that one distinguished, 
beneath her hair which spread to the ground, a gaunt and 
severe profile ; her dress barely allowed the extremity of a 
bare foot to escape, which contracted on the hard, cold pave- 
ment. The little of human form of which one caught a sight 
beneath this envelope of mourning, caused a shudder. 

That figure, which one might hâve supposed to be riveted 
to the fiagstones, appeared to possess neither movement, nor 
thought, nor breath. Lying, in January, in that thin, linen 


HISTORY OF A LE A VE N ED CAKE OF MAIZE. 241 


sack, lying on a granité floor, without fire, in the gloom of a 
cell whose oblique air-bole allowed only the cold breeze, but 
iiever the sun, to enter from without, she did not appear to 
suffer or even to think. One would hâve said that she had 
turned to stone with the cell, ice with the season. Her hands 
were clasped, her eyes fixed. At first sight one took her for 
a spectre ; at the second, for a statue. 

Nevertheless, at intervals, her blue lips half opened to 
admit a breath, and trembled, but as dead and as mechanical 
as the leaves which the wind sweeps aside. 

Nevertheless, from her dull eyes there escaped a look, an 
ineffable look, a profound, lugubrious, imperturbable look, 
incessantly fixed upon a corner of the cell which could not be 
seen from without; a gaze which seemed to fix ail the 
sombre thoughts of that soûl in distress upon some mysterious 
object. 

Such was the créature who had received, from her habita- 
tion, the name of the recluse ” ; and, from her garment, the 
name of the sacked nun.’^ 

The three women, for Gervaise had rejoined Mahiette and 
Oudarde, gazed through the window. Their heads intercepted 
the feeble light in the cell, without the wretched being whom 
they thus deprived of it seeming to pay any attention to 
them. Do not let us trouble lier,’’ said Oudarde, in a low 
voice, “ she is in her ecstasy ; she is praying.” 

Meanwhile, Mahiette was gazing with ever-increasing 
anxiety at that wan, withered, dishevelled head, and her eyes 
filled with tears. This is very singular,” she murmured. 

She thrust her head through the bars, and succeeded in 
casting a glance at the corner where the gaze of the unhappy 
woman was immovably riveted. 

When she withdrew her head from the window, her counte- 
nance was inundated with tears. 

What do y ou call that woman ? ” she asked Oudarde. 

Oudarde replied, — 

We call her Sis ter Gudule.” 

And I,” returned Mahiette, “ call her Paquette la Chante- 
fleurie.” 


^42 


NOTRE-DAME. 


/il 11, laying her finger on her lips, slie motioned to the 

i, nuided Oudarde to thrust her head through the window 
.iid look. 

Oudarde looked and beheld, in the corner where the eyes of 
4ie recluse were fixed in that sombre ecstasy, a tiny shoe of 
pink satin, embroidered with a thousand fanciful designs in 
gold and silver. 

Gervaise looked after Oudarde, and then the three women. 
gazing upon the unhappy mother, began to weep. 

But neither their looks nor their tears disturbed the 
recluse. Her hands reinained clasped ; her lips mute ; her 
eyes fixed ; and that little shoe, thus gazed at, broke the heart 
of any one who knew her history. 

The three women had not yet uttered a single word ; they 
dared not speak, even in a low voice. This deep silence, this 
deep grief, this profound oblivion in which everything had dis- 
appeared except one thing, produced upon them the effect of 
the grand altar at Christmas or Easter. They reinained silent, 
they meditated, they were ready to kneel. It seemed to them 
that they were ready to enter a church on the day of Tenebræ. 

At length Gervaise, the most curions of the three, and con- 
sequently the least sensitive, tried to make the recluse speak : 
“ Sister ! Sister Gudule ! ’’ 

She repeated this call three times, raising her voice each 
time. The recluse did not move ; not a word, not a glance, 
not a sigh, not a sign of life. 

Oudarde, in her turn, in a sweeter, more caressing voice, — 
Sister ! ’’ said she, Sister Sainte-Gudule ! 

The same silence ; the same immobility. 

A singular woman ! ” exclaimed Gervaise, and one not to 
be moved by a catapult ! ” 

“Perchance she is deaf,” said Oudarde. 

“ Perhaps she is blind,” added Gervaise. 

Dead, perchance,’’ returned Mahiette. 

It is certain that if the soûl had not already quitte d this 
inert, sluggish, léthargie body, it had at least retreated and 
concealed itself in depths whither the perceptions of the 
exterior organs no longer penetrated. 


mSTORY OF A LEAVENED CAKE OF MAIZE. 243 


^^Then we must leave the cake on the window/’ said 
Oudarde ; “ some scainp will take it. What shall we do to 
rouse her ? ” 

Enstache, who, up to tkat moment had been diverted by a 
little carriage drawn by a large dog, wbicb had just passed, 
snddenly perceived that his three conductresses were gazing 
at something throngh the window, and, curiosity taking pos- 
session of him in his tnrn, he climbed upon a stone post, 
elevated himself on tiptoe, and applied his fat, red face to the 
opening, shonting, “ Mother, let me see too ! ” 

At the Sound of this clear, fresh, ringing child’s voice, the 
recluse trembled ; she turned her head with the sharp, abrupt 
movement of a Steel spring, her long, fleshless hands cast 
aside the hair from her brow, and she fixed upon the child, 
bitter, astonished, desperate eyes. This glance was but a 
lightning flash. 

“ Oh my God ! ’’ she suddenly exclaimed, hiding her head on 
her knees, and it seemed as though her hoarse voice tore her 
chest as it passed from it, do not show me those of others ! ” 
Good day, madam,” said the child, gravely. 

Nevertheless, this shock had, so to speak, awakened the 
recluse. A long shiver traversed her frame from head to 
foot ; her teeth chattered ; she half raised her head and said, 
pressing her elbows against her hips, and clasping her feet 
in her hands as though to warm them, — 

Oh, how cold it is ! ” 

^‘Poor woman!’^ said Oudarde, with great compassion, 
would you like a little fire ? 

She shook her head in token of refusai. 

^^Well,” resumed Oudarde, presenting her with a flagon; 
here is some hippocras which will warm you ; drink it.” 

Again she shook her head, looked at Oudarde fixedly and 
replied, “Water.” 

Oudarde persisted, — “ISTo, sister, that is no beverage for 
January. You must drink a little hippocras and eat this 
leavened cake of maizè, which we hâve baked for you.” 

She refused the cake which Mahiette offered to her, and 
said, Black bread.” 


244 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Come/^ said Gervaise, seized in her turn with an impulse 
of charity, and unfastening her woolen cloak, here is a cloak 
which is a little warmer than yours.’’ 

She refused the cloak as she had refused the flagon and 
the cake, ajid replied, A sack.’^ 

resuined the good Oudarde, ‘^you must hâve per- 
ceived to some extent, that yesterday was a festival*’^ 

“ I do perçoive it,’’ said the recluse ; ’tis two days now 
silice I hâve had any water in my crock/^ 

She added, after a silence, “ ’Tis a festival, I ain forgotten. 
People do well. Why should the world think of me, when I 
do not think of it ? Cold charcoal makes cold ashes.’’ 

And as though fatigued with having said so much, she 
dropped her head on her knees again. The simple and chari- 
table Oudarde, who fancied that she understood from her last 
words that she was complaining of the cold, replied inno- 
cently, ^^Then y ou would like a little lire ? 

Fire ! ’’ said the sacked nun, with a strange accent ; “ and 
will you also make a little for the poor little one who has 
been beneath the sod for these fifteen years ? 

Every limb was trembling, her voice quivered, her eyes 
flashed, she had raised herself upon her knees ; suddenly she 
extended her thin, white hand towards the child, who was 
regarding her with a look of astonishment. ^^Take away 
that child!” she cried. “The Egyptian woman is about to 
pas s by.” 

Then she fell face downward on the earth, and her forehead 
struck the stone, with the Sound of one stone against another 
stone. The three women thought her dead. A moment later, 
however, she moved, and they beheld her drag herself, on her 
knees and elbows, to the corner where the little shoe was. 
Then they dared not look ; they no longer saw her ; but they 
heard a thousand kisses and a thousand sighs, mingled with 
heartrending cries, and dull blows like those of a head in con- 
tact with a Wall. Then, after one of these blows, so violent 
that ail three of them staggered, they heard no more. 

“ Can she hâve killed herself ? ” said Gervaise, venturing to 
pass her head through the air-hole. “ Sister ! Sister Gudule ! ” 


HISTORY OF A LFAVFJVFD CAKE OF MAIZE. 245 

“ Sister Gudule ! ” repeated Oudarde. 

Ah ! good heavens ! she no longer moves ! ” resumed 
Gervaise ; ‘‘ is she dead ? Gudule ! Gudule ! ’’ 

Mahiette, choked to such a point that she could not speak, 
made an effort. “ Wait,” said she. Then bending towards 
the window, Paquette ! she said, ^^Paquette le Chante- 
fleurie ! ” 

A child who innocently blows upon the badly ignited fuse 
of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terri- 
fied than was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly 
launched into the cell of Sister Gudule. 

The recluse trembled ail over, rose erect on lier bare feet, 
and leaped at the window with eyes so glaring that Mahiette 
and Oudarde, and the other woman and the child recoiled even 
to the parapet of the quay. 

Meanwhile, the sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed 
to the grating of the air-hole. “ Oh ! oh ! ” she cried, with 
an appalling laugh ; “ Tis the Egyptian who is calling me ! ” 

At that moment, a scene which was passing at the pillory 
caught her wild eye. Her brow contracted with horror, she 
stretched her two skeleton arms from her cell, and shrieked in 
a voice which resembled a death-rattle, So Tis thon once 
more, daughter of Egypt ! ’Tis thon who callest me, stealer 
of children! Well ! Be thou accursed! accursed ! accursed! 
accursed ! 



CHAPTEE IV. 

A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER. 

These words were, so to speak, the point of union of two 
scenes, Avhich liad, up to that time, been developed in parallel 
lines at the same moment, each on its particular theatre ; one, 
that which the reader has just perused, in the Eat-Hole ; 
the other, which he is about to read, on the ladder of the pil- 
lory. The first had for witnesses only the three women 
with whom the reader has just made acquaintance ; the second 
had for spectators ail the public which we hâve seen above, 
collecting on the Place de Grève, around the pillory and the 
gibbet. 

That crowd which the four sergeants posted at nine o’clock 
in the morning at the four corners of the pillory had inspired 
with the hope of some sort of an execution, no doubt, not a 
hanging, but a whipping, a cropping of ears, something, in 
short, — that crowd had increased so rapidly that the four 
policemen, too closely besieged, had had occasion to press ” 
it, as the expression then ran, more than once, by sound blows 
of their whips, and the haunches of their horses. 

Tins populace, disciplined to waiting for public executions, 
did not manifest very much impatience. It amused itself 
with watching the pillory, a very simple sort of monument, 
composed of a cube of masonry about six feet high and hol- 
low in the interior. A very steep staircase, of unhewn stone, 
which was called by distinction ^^the ladder,” led to the upper 
platform, upon which was visible a horizontal wheel of solid 

246 


A TBAB FOR A DROP OF WATER. 


247 


oak. The victim was bound upoii this wheel, on his knees, 
with his hands behind his back. A wooden shaft, which set 
in motion a capstan concealed in the interior of the little 
édifice, imparted a rotatory motion to the wheel, which always 
maintained its horizontal position, and in this manner pre- 
sented the face of the condemned man to ail quarters of the 
square in succession. This was what was called ^'turning’' 
a criminal. 

As the reader perceives, the pillory of the Grève was far 
from presenting ail the récréations of the pillory of the Halles. 
Nothing architectural, nothing monumental. Ho roof to the 
iron cross, no octagonal lantern, no frail, slender columns 
spreading ont on the edge of the roof into capitals of acanthus 
leaves and flowers, no waterspouts of chimeras and monsters, 
on carved woodwork, no fine sculpture, deeply sunk in the stone. 

They were forced to content themselves with those four 
stretches of rubble work, backed with sandstone, and a 
wretched stone gibbet, meagre and bare, on one side. 

The entertainment would hâve been but a poor one for 
lovers of Gothic architecture. It is true that nothing was 
ever less curions on the score of architecture than the worthy 
gapers of the Middle Ages, and that they cared very little for 
the beauty of a pillory. 

The victim finally arrived, bound to the tail of a cart, and 
when he had been hoisted upon the platform, where he could 
be seen from ail points of the Place, bound with cords and 
straps upon the wheel of the pillory, a prodigious hoot, min- 
gled with laughter and acclamations, burst forth upon the 
Place. They had recognized Quasimodo. 

It was he, in fact. The change was singular. Pilloried on 
the very place where, on the day before, he had been saluted, 
acclaimed, and proclaimed Pope and Prince of Pools, in the 
cortège of the Duke of Egypt, the King of Thunes, and the 
Emperor of Galîlee ! One thing is certain, and that is, that 
there was not a soûl in the crowd, not even himself, though 
in turn triumphant and the sufferer, who set forth this combi- 
nation clearly in his thought. Gringoire and his philosophy 
were missing at this spectacle. 


248 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Soon Micliel Noiret, sworn triimpeter to the king, oiir lord, 
imposed silence on the louts, and proclaimed the sentence, in 
accordance with the order and command of monsieur the pro- 
vost. Then he withdrew behind the cart, with his men in 
livery surcoats. 

Quasimodo, impassible, did not wince. Ail résistance had 
been rendered impossible to him by what was then called, in 
the style of the criminal chancellery, the vehemence and firm- 
ness of the bonds which means that the thongs and chains 
probably eut into his flesh; moreover, it is a tradition of jail 
and wardens, which has not been lost, and which the handeuffs 
still preciously preserve among us, a civilized, gentle, humane 
people (the galleys and the guillotine in parenthèses). 

He had allowed himself to be led, pushed, carried, lifted, 
bound, and bound again. Nothing was to be seen upon his 
countenance but the astonishment of a savage or an idiot. 
He was known to be deaf j one might hâve pronounced him 
to be blind. 

They placed him on his knees on the circular plank ; he 
made no résistance. They removed his shirt and doublet as 
far as his girdle ; he allowed them to hâve their way. They 
entangled him under a fresh System of thongs and buckles ; 
he allowed them to bind and buckle him. Only from time to 
time he snorted noisily, like a calf whose head is hanging and 
bumping over the edge of a butcher’s cart. 

The doit,” said Jehan Frollo of the Mill, to his friend 
Robin Poussepain (for the two stridents had followed the 
culprit, as was to hâve been expected), ‘^he understands no 
more than a cockchafer shut up in a box ! ” 

There was wild laughter among the crowd when they beheld 
Quasimodo’s hump, his camel’s breast, his calions and hairy 
shoulders laid bare. During this gayety, a man in the livery 
of the City, short of stature and robust of mien, mounted the 
platform and placed himself near the victim. His naine 
speedily circulated among the spectators. It was Master 
Pierrat Torterue, official torturer to the Châtelet. 

He began by depositing on an angle of the pillory a black 
hour-glass, the upper lobe of which was filled with red sand. 


A TE AB FOB A DROP OF WATER. 


249 


which it allowed to glide into the lower réceptacle ; then he 
removed his parti-colored surtout, and there became visible, 
suspended from his right hand, a thin and tapering whip of 
long, white, shining, knotted, plaited thongs, armed with 
métal nails. With his left hand, he negligently folded back 
his shirt around his right arm, to the veiy armpit. 

In the meantime. Jehan Frollo, elevating his curly blonde 
head above the crowd (he had mounted upon the shoulders of 
Eobin Poussepain for the purpose), shouted ; Corne and 
look, gentle ladies and men ! they are going to peremptorily 
flagellate Master Quasimodo, the bellringer of my brother, 
monsieur the archdeacon of Josas, a knave of oriental archi- 
tecture, who has a back like a dôme, and legs like twisted 
columns ! ” 

And the crowd burst into a laugh, especially the boys and 
young girls. 

At length the torturer stamped his foot. The wheel began 
to turn. Quasimodo wavered beneath his bonds. The amaze- 
ment which was suddenly depicted upon his deformed face 
caused the bursts of laughter to redouble around him. 

Ail at once, at the moment when the wheel in its révolution 
presented to Master Pierrat, the humped back of Quasimodo, 
Master Pierrat raised his arm ; the fine thongs whistled 
sharply through the air, like a handful of adders, and fell 
with fury upon the wretch’s shoulders. 

Quasimodo leaped as though awakened with a start. He 
began to understand. He writhed in his bonds; a violent 
contraction of surprise and pain distorted the muscles of his 
face, but he uttered not a single sigh. He merely turned his 
head backward, to the right, then to the left, balancing it as a 
bull does who has been stung in the flanks by a gadfly. 

A second blow followed the first, then a third, and another 
and another, and still others. The wheel did not cease to 
turn, nor the blows to ràin down. 

Soon the blood burst forth, and could be seen trickling in a 
thousand threads down the hunchback’s black shoulders ; and 
the slender thongs, in their rotatory motion which rent the 
air, sprinkled drops of it upon the crowd. 


250 


NOTBE-DAME. 


Quasimodo had resumed, to ail appearance, his first impertur- 
bability. He had at first tried, in a quiet way and without much 
outward movement, to break his bonds. His eye had been 
seen to light up, his muscles to stiffen, his members to concen- 
trate their force, and the straps to stretch. The effort was 
powerful, prodigious, desperate; but the provost’s seasoned 
bonds resisted. They cracked, and that was ail. Quasimodo 
fell back exhausted. Amazement gave way, on his features, 
to a sentiment of profound and bitter discouragement. He 
closed his single eye, allowed his head to droop upon his 
breast, and feigned death. 

From that moment forth, he stirred no more. Nothing 
could force a mo veinent from him. Neither his blood, which 
did not cease to flow, nor the blows which redoubled in fury, 
nor the wrath of the torturer, who grew excited himself and 
intoxicated with the execution, nor the sound of the horrible 
thongs, more sharp and whistling than the claws of scorpions. 

At length a bailiff from the Châtelet clad in black, mounted 
on a black horse, who had been stationed beside the ladder 
since the beginning of the execution, extended his ebony wand 
towards the hour-glass. The torturer stopped. The wheel 
stopped. Quasimodo’s eye opened slowly. 

The scourging was finished. Two lackeys of the official 
torturer bathed the bleeding shoulders of the patient, anointed 
them with some unguent which immediately closed ail the 
wounds, and threw upon his back a sort of yellow vestment, 
in eut like a chasuble. In the meanwhile, Pierrat Torterue 
allowed the thongs, red and gorged with blood, to drip upon 
the pavement. 

AU was not over for Quasimodo. He had still to undergo 
that hour of pillory which Master Florian Barbedienne had so 
l'udiciously added to the sentence of Messire Eobert d’Estoute- 
•ille ; ail to the greater glory of the old physiological and 
■chological play upon words of Jean de Cumène, Surdus 
•if/rdus: a deaf man is absurd. 

o the hour-glass was turned over once more, and they left 
hunchback fastened to the plank, in order that justice 
might be accomplished to the very end. 


A TJEJAB FOR A DROP OF WATER. 


251 


The populace, especially in the Middle Ages, is in society 
what the child is in the family. As long as it remains in its 
State of primitive ignorance, of moral and intellectual minor- 
ity, it can be said of it as of the child, — 

’Tis the pitiless âge. 

We hâve already shown that Quasimodo was generally 
hated, for more than one good reason, it is true. There was 
hardly a spectator in that crowd who had not or who did not 
believe that he had reason to complain of the malevolent 
hunchback of Notre-Dame. The joy at seeing him appear 
thus in the pillory had been universal ; and the harsh punish- 
ment which he had just suffered, and the pitiful condition in 
which it had left him, far from softening the populace had 
rendered its hatred more malicious by arming it with a touch 
of mirth. 

Hence, the “public prosecution” satisfied, as the bigwigs 
of the law still express it in their jargon, the turn came of a 
thousand private vengeances. Here, as in the Grand Hall, the 
women rendered themselves particularly prominent. Ail 
cherished some rancor against him, some for his malice, others 
for his ugliness. The latter were the most furious. 

“ Oh ! mask of Antichrist ! ” said one. 

“ Rider on a broom handle ! ” cried another 
“ What a fine tragic grimace,” howled a third, “ and who 
would make him Pope of the Pools if to-day were yesterday ? ” 
“ ’Tis well,” struck in an old woman. “ This is the grimace 
of the pillory. When shall we hâve that of the gibbet ? ” 

“ When will you be coiffed with your big bell a hundred feet 
under ground, cursed bellringer ? ” 

“ But ’tis the devil who rings the Angélus ! ” 

“ Oh ! the deaf man ! the one-eyed créature ! the hunch- 
back ! the monster ! ” 

“A face to make a woman miscarry better than ail the 
drugs and medicines ! ” 

And the two scholars. Jehan du Moulin, and Robin Pousse- 
pain, sang at the top of their lungs, the ancient refrain, — 


252 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ Une hart 
Pour le pendardi 
Un fagot 

Pour le magot!” * 

A thousand other insults rained dowu upon him, and hoots 
and imprécations, and laughter, and now and then, stones. 

Quasimodo was deaf but his sight was clear, and the public 
fury was no less energetically depicted on tbeir visages than 
in tbeir words. Moreover, the blows from the stones ex- 
plained the bursts of laughter. 

At first he held his ground. But little by little that pa- 
tience which had borne up under the lash of the torturer, 
yielded and gave way before ail these stings of insects. The 
bull of the Asturias who bas been but little moved by the 
attacks of the picador grows irritated with the dogs and 
banderilleras. 

He first cast around a slow glance of hatred upon the crowd. 
But bound as he was, his glance was powerless to drive away 
those Aies which were stinging his wound. Then he moved in 
his bonds, and his furious exertions made the ancient wheel of 
the pillory shriek on its axle. Ail this only increased the 
dérision and hooting. 

Then the wretched man, unable to break his collar, like that 
of a chained wild beast, became tranquil once more ; only at 
intervals a sigh of rage heaved the hollows of his chest. 
There was neither shame nor redness on his face. He was 
too far from the state of society, and too near the State of 
nature to know what shame was. Moreover, with such a de- 
gree of deformity, is infamy a thing that can be felt ? But 
wrath, hatred, despair, slowly lowered over that hideous visage 
a cloud which grew ever more and more sombre, ever more and 
more charged with electricity, which burst forth in a thousand 
lightning flashes from the eye of the cyclops. 

Nevertheless, that cloud cleared away for a moment, at the 
passage of a mule which traversed the crowd, bearing a priest. 
As far away as he could see that mule and that priest, the poor 
victimes visage grew gentler. The fury which had contracted 
* A rope for the gallows bird ! A fagot for the ape. 


A TEAR FOR A DROP OF WATER. 


253 


it was followed by a strange smile full of ineffable sweetness, 
gentleness, and tenderness. In proportion as the priest ap- 
proached, that smile became more clear, more distinct, more 
radiant. It was like tbe arrivai of a Saviour, which tbe un- 
bappy man was greeting. But as soon as the mule was near 
enough to the pillory to allow of its rider recognizing the vic- 
tim, the priest dropped his eyes, beat a hasty retreat, spurred 
on rigorously, as though in haste to rid himself of humiliating 
appeals, and not at ail désirons of being saluted and recog- 
nized by a poor fellow in such a predicament. 

This priest was Archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo. 

The cloud descended more blackly than ever upon Quasi- 
modo’s brow. The smile was still mingled with it for a time, 
but was bitter, discouraged, profoundly sad. 

Time passed on. He had been there at least an hour and a 
half, lacerated, maltreated, mocked incessantly, and almost 
stoned. 

Ail at once he moved again in his chains with redoubled 
despair, which made the whole framework that bore him trem- 
ble, and, breaking the silence which he had obstinately pre- 
served hitherto, he cried in a hoarse and furious voice, which 
resembled a bark rather than a human cry, and which was 
drowned in the noise of the hoots : — ‘‘ Drink ! ’’ 

This exclamation of distress, far from exciting compassion, 
only added amusement to the good Parisian populace who sur- 
rounded the ladder, and who, it must be confessed, taken in 
the mass and as a multitude, was then no less cruel and brutal 
than that horrible tribe of robbers among whom we hâve al- 
ready conducted the reader, and which was simply the lower 
stratum of the populace. Not a voice was raised around the 
unhappy victim, except to jeer at his thirst. It is certain 
that at that moment he was more grotesque and répulsive 
than pitiable, with his face purple and dripping, his eye wild, 
his mouth foaming with rage and pain, and his tongue lolling 
half ont. It must also be stated that if a charitable soûl of a 
bourgeois or bourgeoise^ in the rabble, had attempted to carry 
a glass of water to that wretched créature in torment, there 
reigned around the infamous steps of the pillory such a preju- 


254 


NOTEE-BAME. 


dice of shame and ignominy, that it woiild hâve sufficed to re- 
pulse the good Samaritan. 

At the expiration of a few moments, Quasimodo cast a des- 
perate glance upon the crowd, and repeated in a voice still 
more heartrending : — “ Drink ! ’’ 

And ail began to laugh. 

“ Drink this ! ’’ cried Robin Ponssepain, throwing in his 
face a sponge which had been soaked in the gutter. There, 
you deaf villain, Ihn your debtor/^ 

A woman hurled a stone at his head, — 

That will teach you to wake us up at night with your peal 
of a dammed soûl.’’ 

^‘Hé, good, my son ! ” howled a cripple, making an effort to 
reach him with his crutch, “ will you cast any more spells on 
us from the top of the towers of Notre-Dame ? ” 

Here’s a drinking cup ! ” chimed in a man, flinging a 
broken jug at his breast. ^^’Twas you that made my wife, 
simply because she passed near you, give birth to a child with 
two heads ! ” 

And my cat bring f orth a kitten with six paws ! ” yelped 
an old crone, launching a brick at him. 

“Drink!” repeated Quasimodo panting, and for the third 
time. 

At that moment he beheld the crowd give way. A young 
girl, fantastically dressed, emerged from the throng. She 
was accompanied by a little white goat with gilded horns, and 
carried a tambourine in her hand. 

Quasimodo’s eyes sparkled. It was the gypsy whom he had 
attempted to carry off on the preceding night, a misdeed for 
which he was dimly conscious that he was being punished at 
that very moment ; which was not in the least the case, since 
he was being chastised only for the misfortune of being deaf, 
and of having been judged by a deaf man. He doubted not 
that she had corne to wreak her vengeance also, and to deal 
her blow like the rest. 

He beheld her, in fact, mount the ladder rapidly. Wrath 
and spite suffocate him. He would hâve liked to make the 
pillory crumble into ruins, and if the lightning of his eye 


A TE AU FOR A DROP OF WATFR. 255 

could hâve dealt death, the gypsy wonld hâve been reduced 
to powder before she reached the platforin. 

She approached, without uttering a syllable, the victim 
who writhed in a vain effort to escape her, and detaching a 
gourd from her girdle, she raised it gently to the parched lips 
of the misérable man. 

Then, from that eye which had been, up to that moment, so 
dry and burning, a big tear was seen to fall, and roll slowly 
down that deformed visage so long contracted with despair. 
It was the first, in ail probability, that the unfortunate man 
had ever shed. 

Meanwhile, he had forgotten to drink. The gypsy made 
her little pont, from impatience, and pressed the spont to the 
tusked mouth of Qiiasimodo, with a smile. 

He drank with deep draughts. His thirst was burning. 

When he had finished, the wretch protruded his black lips, 
no doubt, with the object of kissing the beautiful hand which 
had just succoured him. But the young girl, who was, perhaps, 
somewhat distrustful, and who remembered the violent attempt 
of the night, withdrew her hand with the frightened gesture 
of a child who is afraid of being bitten by a beast. 

Then the poor deaf man fixed on her a look full of reproach 
and inexpressible sadness. 

It would hâve been a touching spectacle any where, — thîs 
beautiful, fresh, pure, and charming girl, who was at the 
same time so weak, thus hastening to the relief of so much 
misery, deformity, and malevolence, On the pillory, the spec- 
tacle was sublime. 

The very populace were captivated by it, and began to clap 
their hands, crying, — 

^'Hoël! Noël!'' 

It was at that moment that the recluse caught sight, from 
the window of her hole, of the gypsy on the pillory, and 
hurled at her her sinister imprécation, — 

^^Accursed be thou, daughter of Egypt! Accursedl 
accursed I 



CHAPTER V. 

END OP THE STORY OP THE CAKE. 

La Esmeralda turned pale and descended from the pillory, 
fitaggering as slie went. The voice of the recluse still pursued 
her, — 

Descend ! descend I Thief of Egypt ! thon shalt ascend it 
once more ! 

The sacked nun is in one of her tantrums/’ muttered the 
populace ; and that was the end of it. Eor that sort of woinan 
was feared ; which rendered thein sacred. People did not then 
willingly attack one who prayed day and night. 

The hour had arrived for renioving Quasimodo. He was 
unhound, the crowd dispersed. 

Near the Grand Pont, Mahiette, who was returning with her 
two companions, suddenly halted, — 

By the way, Eustache ! what did you do with that cake ? 

Mother/’ said the child, while you were talking with 
that lady in the hole, a big dog took a bite of my cake, and 
then I bit it also.’’ 

What, sir, did you eat the whole of it ? ’’ she went on. 

Mother, it was the dog. I told him, but he would not 
listen to me. Then I bit into it, also.’^ 

<‘^Tis a terrible child!” said the mother, smiling and scold- 

256 


J 


END OF THE STORY OF THE CAKE. 257 

ing at one and the same time. Do you see, Oudarde ? He 
already eats ail the fruit from the cherry-tree in our orchard 
of Charlerange. So his grandfather says that he will be a 
captain. Just let me catch you at it again, Master Eustache. 
Corne along, you greedy fellow 1 







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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


4 

VOLUME IL 

BOOK SEVENTH. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. The Danger of Confiding One’s Secret to a Goat .... 1 

II. A Priest and a Philosopher are two Different Things ... 17 

III. TheBells 27 

lY. 30 

V. The Two Men Clothed in Black 45 

YI. The Effect which Seven Oaths in the Open Air can Produce, 52 

YII. Tlie Mysterioiis Monk 57 

YIII. The Utility of Windows which Open on the River .... 66 

BOOK EIGHTH. 

I. The Crown Çhanged into a Dry Leaf 75 

IL Continuation of the Crown which was Changed into a Dry 

Leaf 86 

III. End of the Crown which was Changed into a Dry Leaf . . 92 

lY. Lasciate Ogni Speranza — Leave ail Hope behiiid, ye who 

Enter here 96 

Y. The Mother 111 

YI. Threê Iluman Hearts differently Constructed 116 

iii 


CONTENTS. 


iv 

BOOK NINTH. 

I. Delirium 135 

II. Hunchbacked, One Eyed, Lame 148 

IIL Deaf 153 

IV. Earthenware and Crystal 157 

Y. The Key to the Red Door 169 

VI. Continuation of the Key to the Red Door 172 

BOOK TENTH. 

I. Gringoire has Many Good Ideas in Succession. — Rue des Ber- 
nardins 177 

II. Turn Vagabond 189 

, III. Long Live Mirth 192 

IV. An Awkward Friend 201 

V. The Retreat in which Monsieur Louis of France says his 

Prayers 222 

VI. Little Sword in Pocket 255 

VII. Chateaupers to the Rescue 257 

BOOK ELEVENTH. 

I. The Little Shoe 261 

II. The Beautiful Créature Clad in White 296 

III. The Marriage of Phœbus 306 

IV. The Marriage of Quasimodo 308 

Note added to Definitive Edition 311 



BOOK SEVENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE DANGER OF CONFIDING ONE’s SECRET TO A GOAT. 

Many weeks had elapsed. 

The first of March had arrived. The sun, which Dubar- 
tas, that classic ancestor of périphrase, had not yet dubbed 
the Grand-duke of Candies,’’ was none the less radiant and 
j oyons on that account. It was one of those spring days 
which possess so niuch sweetness and beauty, that ail Paris 
turns ont into the squares and promenades and célébrâtes 
them as though they were Sundays. In those days of bril- 
liancy, warmth, and serenity, there is a certain hour above ail 
others, when the façade of Kotre-Dame should be admired. 
It is the moment when the sun, already declining towards the 
west, looks the cathédral almost full in the face. Its rays, 
growing more and more horizontal, withdraw slowly froni the 
pavement of the square, and mount up the perpendicular 
façade, whose thousand bosses in high relief they cause to 
start out from the shadows, while the great central rose 
window fiâmes like the eye of a cyclops, infiamed with the 
refiections of the forge. 

This was the hour. 

Opposite the lofty cathédral, reddened by the setting sun, 
on the stone balcony built above the porch of a rich Gothic 

1 


2 


NOTRE-DAME. 


house, whicli formed the angle of thé square and the Rue du 
Parvis, several young girls were laughing and chatting with 
every sort of grâce and mirth. Proiù the length. of tlie veil 
which fell from their pointed coif, twined with pearls, to their 
heels, from the fineness of the embroidered chemisette which 
covered their shoulders and allowed a glimpse, according to 
the pleasing custom of the time, of the swell of their faii 
Virgin bosoms, from the opulence of their under-petticoats 
still more precious than their overdress (marvellous refine, 
ment), from the gauze, the silk, the velvet, with which ail 
this was composed, and, above ail, from the whiteness of their 
hands, which certified to their leisure and idleness, it was 
easy to divine they were noble and wealthy heiresses. They 
were, in fact, Damoiselle Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and 
her companions, Diane de Christeuil, Amelotte de Montmichel, 
Colombe de Gaillefontaine, and the little de Champchevrier 
maiden ; ail damsels of good birth, assembled at that moment 
at the house of the dame widow de Gondelaurier, on account 
of Monseigneur de Beaujeu and Madame his wife, who were 
to corne to Paris in the month of April, there to choose maids 
of honor for the Dauphiness Marguerite, who was to be re- 
ceived in Picardy from the hands of the Flemings. Row, 
ail the squires for twenty leagues around were intriguing for 
this favor for their daughters, and a goodly number of the 
latter had been already brought or sent to Paris. These four 
maidens had been confided to the discreet and venerable 
charge of Madame Aloïse de Gondelaurier, widow of a former 
commander of the king’s cross-bowmen, who had retired with 
her only daughter to her house in the Place du Parvis, Notre- 
Dame, in Paris. 

The balcony on which these young girls stood opened from 
a chamber richly tapestried in fawn-colored Flanders leather, 
stamped with golden foliage. The beams, which eut the ceil- 
ing in parallel Unes, diverted the eye with a thousand eccen- 
tric painted and gilded carvings. Splendid enamels gleamed 
here and there on carved chests ; a boar’s head in faïence 
crowned a magnificent dresser, whose two shelves announced 
that the mistress of the house was the wife or widow of a 


CONFIDING ONE’ S SECRET TO A GO AT. 


3 


knight banneret. At tbe end of the room, by the side of a 
lofty chimney blazoned with arms from top to bottom, in 
a ricb red velvet arm-chair, sat Dame de Gondelaurier, whose 
five and fifty years were written upon her garments no less 
distinctly than upon her face. 

Beside her stood a young man of imposing mien, although 
partaking somewhat of vanity and bravado — one of those hand- 
some fellows whom ail women agréé to admire, although grave 
men learned in physiognomy shrug their shoulders at them. 
This young man wore the garb of a captain of the king’s 
unattached archers, which bears far too much resemblance to 
the costume of Jupiter, which the reader has already been 
enabled to admire in the first book of this history, for us to 
inflict upon him a second description. 

The damoiselles were seated, a part in the chamber, a part 
in the balcony, some on square cushions of Utrecht velvet 
with golden corners, others on stools of oak carved in flowers 
and figures. Each of them held on her knee a section of a 
great needlework tapestry, on which they were working in 
company, while one end of it lay upon the rush mat which 
covered the floor. 

They were chatting together in that whispering tone and 
with the half-stifled laughs peculiar to an assembly of young 
girls in whose midst there is a young man. The young man 
whose presence served to set in play ail these féminine self- 
conceits, appeared to pay very little heed to the matter, and, 
while these pretty damsels were vying with one another to 
attract his attention, he seemed to be chiefly absorbed in pol- 
ishing the buckle of his sword belt with his doeskin glove. 

From time to time, the old lady addressed him in a very 
low tone, and he replied as well as he was able, with a sort of 
awkward and constrained politeness. 

From the smiles and significant gestures of Dame Aloïse, 
from the glances which she threw towards her daughter, 
Fleur-de-Lys, as she spoke low to the captain, it was easy to 
see that there was here a question of some betrothal con- 
cluded, some marriage near at hand no doubt, between the 
young man and Fleur-de-Lys. From the embarrassed coldness 


4 


NOTBE-BAME. 


of the officer, it was easy to see that on his side, at least, love 
had no longer any part in the- matter. His whole air was 
expressive of constraint and weariness, which our lieutenants 
of the garrison would to-day translate admirably as, What a 
beastly bore ! ’’ 

The poor dame, very much infatuated with her daughter, 
like any other silly inother, did not perceive the officer’s lack 
of enthusiasm, and strove in low tones to call his attention 
to the infinité grâce with which Fleur-de-Lys used her needle 
or wound her skein. 

“ Corne, little cousin,’’ she said to him, plucking him by the 
sleeve, in order to speak in his ear, ^^Look at her, do ! see her 
stoop.” 

“ Yes, truly,” replied the young man, and fell back into his 
glacial and absent-minded silence. 

A moment later, he was obliged to bend down again, and 
Dame Aloïse said to him, — 

Hâve you ever beheld a more gay and charming face than 
that of your betrothed ? Can one be more white and blonde ? 
are not her hands perfect ? and that neck — does it not 
assume ail the curves of the swan in ravishing fashion ? How 
I envy you at times ! and how happy you are to be a man, 
naughty libertine that you are! Is not my Fleur-de-Lys 
adorably beautiful, and are you not desperately in love with 
her ? ” 

'' Of course,” he replied, still thinking of something else. 

^ ''But do say something,” said Madame Aloïse,' suddenly 
giving his shoulder a push ; " you hâve grown very timid.” 

We can assure our readers that timidity was neither the 
captain’s virtue nor his defect. But he made an effort to do 
what was demanded of him. 

"Fair cousin,” he said, approaching Fleur-de-Lys, "what is 
the subject of this tapestry work which you are fashioning ? ’ 

"Fair cousin,” responded Fleur-de-Lys, in an offended tone, 
" I hâve already told you three times. ’Tis the grotto of Hen- 
tune.” 

It was évident that Fleur-de-Lys saw much more clearly 
than her mother through the captain’s cold and absent-minded 


CONFIBING ONE’ S SECRET TO A GOAT. 5 

manner. He felt the necessity of inaking some conver- 
sation. 

And for whom is this Keptunerie destined ? ’’ 

For the Abbey of Saint- Antoine des Champs/’ answered 
Fleur-de-Lys, without raising her eyes. 

The captain took np a corner of the tapestry. 

Who, my fair cousin, is this big gendarme, who is puffing 
ont his cheeks to their full extent and blowing a trumpet ? ” 

a Triton,” she replied. 

There was a rather pettish intonation in Fleur-de-Lys’s 
laconic words. The young man understood that it was indis- 
pensable that he shoiüd whisper something in her ear, a com- 
monplace, a gallant compliment, no matter what. Accordingly 
he bent down, but he could find nothing in his imagination 
more tender and personal than this, — 

^‘Why does your mother always wear that surcoat with 
armorial designs, like our grandmothers of the time of Charles 
VII. ? Tell her, fair cousin, that ’tis no longer the fashion, 
and that the hinge (gond) and the laurel (laurier) embroid- 
ered on her robe give her the air of a walking mantlepiece. 
In truth, people no longer sit thus on their banners, I assure 
you.” 

Fleur-de-Lys raised her beautiful eyes, full of reproach, 

Is that ail of which you can assure me ? ” she said, in a low 
voice. 

In the meantime. Dame Aloïse, delighted to see them thus 
bending towards each other and whispering, said as she toyed 
with the clasps of her prayer-book, — 

Touching picture of love ! ” 

The càptain, more and more embarrassed, fell back upon the 
subject of the tapestry, — ^^’Tis, in sooth, a charming work ! ” 
he exclaimed. 

Whereupon Colombe de Gaillefontaine, another beautiful 
blonde, with a white skin, dressed to the neck in blue damask, 
ventured a timid remark which she addressed to Fleur-de-Lys, 
in the hope that the handsome captain would reply to it, My 
dear Gondelaurier, hâve you seen the tapestries of the Hôtel 
de la Eoche-Guyon ? ” 


6 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Is not that the hôtel in which is enclosed the garden of 
the Lingère du Louvre ? ’’ asked Diane de Christeuil with a 
laugh ; for she had handsome teeth, and consequently laughed 
on every occasion. 

^^And where there is that big, old tower of the ancient 
wall of Paris,” added Amelotte de Montmichel, a pretty fresh 
and curly-headed brunette, who had a habit of sighing just as 
the other laughed, withont knowing why. 

“ My dear Colombe,” interpolated Dame Aloïse, “ do you 
not mean the hôtel which belonged to Monsieur de Bacque- 
ville, in the reign of King Charles VI. ? there are indeed 
many superb high warp tapestries there.” 

Charles VI. ! Charles VI ! ” muttered the young captain, 
twirling his moustache. Good heavens ! what old things 
the good dame does remember !” 

Madame de Gondelaurier continued, ^^Fine tapestries, in 
truth. A work so esteemed that it passes as unrivalled.” 

At that moment Bérangère de Champchevrier, a slender 
little maid of seven years, who was peering into the square 
through the trefoils of the balcony, exclaimed, Oh ! look, 
fair Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, at that pretty dancer who is 
dancing on the pavement and playing the tambourine in the 
midst of the loutish bourgeois ! ” 

The sdnorous vibration of a tambourine was, in fact, audible. 

Some gypsy from Bohemia,” said Fleur-de-Lys, turning 
carelessly toward the square. 

Look ! look ! ” exclaimed her lively companions ; and they 
ail ran to the edge of the balcony, while Fleur-de-Lys-, ren- 
dered thoughtful by the coldness of her betrothed, followed 
them slowly, and the latter, relieved by this incident, which 
put an end to an embarrassing conversation, retreated to the 
farther end of the room, with the satisfied air of a soldier 
released from duty. Nevertheless, the fair Fleur-de-Lys’s was 
a charming and noble service, and such it had formerly 
appeared to him; but the captain had gradually become 
blasé ; the prospect of a speedy marriage cooled him more 
every day. Moreover, he was of a fickle disposition, and, 
must we say it, rather vulgar in taste. Although of very 


CONFIBING ONE’ S SECRET TO A GO AT. 


7 


noble birth, he bad contracted in bis official barness more 
tban one babit of tbe common trooper. Tbe tavern and its 
accompaniments pleased bim. He was only at bis ease amid 
gross language, military gallantries, facile beanties, and suc- 
cesses yet more easy. He bad, nevertbeless, received from 
bis family some éducation and some politeness of manner ; 
but be bad been tbrown on tbe world too young, be bad been 
in garrison at too early an âge, and every day tbe polisb of a 
gentleman became more and more effaced by tbe rougb fric- 
tion of bis gendarme’s cross-belt. Wbile still continuing to 
visit ber from time to time, from a remuant of common 
respect, be felt doubly embarrassed witb Fleur-de-Lys ; in tbe 
first place, because, in conséquence of baving scattered bis 
love in ail sorts of places, be bad reserved very little for ber ; 
in tbe next place, because, amid so many stiff, formai, and 
decent ladies, be was in constant fear lest bis moutb, babitu- 
ated to oatbs, sbould suddenly take tbe bit in its teetb, and 
break ont into tbe language of tbe tavern. Tbe effect can 
be imagined ! 

Moreover, ail tbis was mingled in bim, witb great préten- 
tions to elegance, toilet, and a fine appearance. Let tbe 
reader reconcile tbese tbings as best be can. I am simply tbe 
bistorian. 

He bad remained, tberefore, for several minutes, leaning in 
silence against tbe carved jamb of tbe cbimney, and tbinking 
or not tbinking, wben Fleur-de-Lys suddenly turned and ad- 
dressed bim. After ail, tbe poor young girl was pouting 
against tbe dictâtes of ber beart. 

Fair cousin, did you not speak to us of a little Bohemian 
wbom you saved a couple of months ago, wbile making tbe 
patrol witb tbe watcb at nigbt, from tbe bands of a dozen 
robbers ? 

I believe so, fair cousin,’’ said tbe captain. 

Well,” sbe resumed, “percbance ’tis tbat same gypsy girl 
wbo is dancing yonder, on tbe cburcb square. Corne and see 
if you recognize ber, fair Cousin Pbœbus.” 

A secret desire for réconciliation was apparent in tbis gentle 
invitation wbicb sbe gave bim to approacb ber, and in tbe 


8 


NOTBE-BAME. 


care which she took to call him by name. Captain Phœbus 
de Cbâteaupers (for it is he whom the reader bas had before 
bis eyes since tbe begining of tbis cbapter) slowly approacbed 
tbe balcony. Stay/’ said Fleur-de-Lys, laying ber band ten- 
derly on Pbœbus’s arm ; look at that little girl yonder, dan- 
cing in tbat circle. Is sbe your Bohemian ? 

Phœbus looked, and said, — 

Yes, I recognize ber by ber goat.’’ 

Oh ! in fact, what a pretty little goat ! ’’ said Amelotte, 
clasping ber bands in admiration. 

Are bis borns of real gold ? ’’ inquired Bérangère. 

Witbout moving from ber arm-chair, Dame Aloïse inter- 
posed, Is sbe not one of those gypsy girls who arrived last 
year by tbe Gibard gâte ? 

Madame my motber,’’ said Fleur-de-Lys gently, tbat gâte 
is now called tbe Porte d’Enfer.’^ 

Mademoiselle de Gondelaurier knew bow ber mother’s an- 
tiquated mode of speech shocked the captain. In fact, he 
began to sneer, and muttered between bis teetb : Porte Gib- 
ard ! Porte Gibard ! ’Tis enougb to make King Charles VI. 
pass by.” 

Godmother ! ” exclaimed Bérangère, wbose eyes, inces- 
santly in motion, bad suddenly been raised to the summit of 
tbe towers of Notre-Dame, ^Gvho is tbat black man up 
yonder ? ” 

Ail the young girls raised their eyes. A man was, in truth, 
leaning on the balustrade which surmounted the northern 
tower, looking on the Grève. He was a priest. His costume 
could be plainly discerned, and bis face resting on both his 
bands. But be stirred no more than if he had been a statue. 
His eyes, intently fixed, gazed into the Place. 

It was sometbing like the immobility of a bird of prey, who 
bas just discovered a nest of sparrows, and is gazing at it. 

^^’Tis monsieur tbe archdeacon of Josas,” said Fleur-de-Lys. 

You bave good eyes if you can recognize bim from bere,” 
said tbe Gaillefontaine. 

How be is staring at tbe little dancer ! ” went on Diane 
de Christeuil. 


CONFIDING ONE’ S SECRET TO A GO AT. 9 

Let the gypsy beware ! ’’ said Meur-de-Lys, for he loves 
not Egypt.^’ 

’Tis a great shame for that man to look upon lier tlius,” 
added Amelotte de Montmichel, ‘‘for she dances delight- 
fully.’’ 

“ Fair cousin Phœbus/’ said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, “ Since 
you know this little gypsy, make ber a sign to corne up here. 

It will amuse us/’ 

“ Ob, yes ! ” exclaimed ail tbe young girls, clapping tbeir 
bands. 

“ Wby ! ’tis not wortb wbile,” replied Pboebus. “ Sbe bas 
forgotten me, no doubt, and I know not so much as ber 
naine. Nevertbeless, as you wisb it, young ladies, I will 
make the trial.” And leaning over the balustrade of tbe 
balcony, be began to sbout, “ Little one ! ” 

The dancer was not beating ber tambourine at tbe moment. 
Sbe turned ber head towards the point whence tbis call pro- 
ceeded, ber brilliant eyes rested on Phœbus, and sbe stopped 
short. 

“ Little one ! ” repeated tbe captain ; and he beckoned ber • 
to approacb. 

The young girl looked at him again, then sbe blusbed as 
thougb a flame had mounted into ber cbeeks, and, taking ber 
tambourine under ber arm, sbe made ber way througb the 
astonisbed spectators towards the door of tbe bouse where 
Phœbus was calling ber, with slow, tottering steps, and witb 
tbe troubled look of a bird whicb is yielding to the fascina- 
tion of a serpent. 

A moment later, tbe tapestry portière was raised, and tbe 
gypsy appeared on the threshold of the cbamber, blusbing, 
confused, breathless, ber large eyes drooping, and not daring 
to advance another step. ^ 

Bérangère clappéd ber bands. 

Meanwhile, tbe dancer remained motionless upon the tbresh- 
old. Her appearance had produced a singular effect upon 
these young girls. It is certain that a vague and indistinct 
desire to please the bandsome officer animated them ail, that 
bis splendid uniform was tbe target of ail tbeir coquetries, 


10 


NOTRE-DAME. 


and that from the moment he presented himself, there existed 
among them a secret, suppressed rivalry, which they hardly 
acknowledged even to themselves, but which. broke forth, 
noue the less, every instant, in their gestures and remarks. 
Nevertheless, as they were ail very nearly equal in beaiity, 
they contended with equal arms, and each could hope for the 
victory. The arrivai of the gypsy suddenly destroyed this 
equilibrium. Her beauty was so rare, that, at the moment 
when she appeared at the entrance of the apartment, it 
seemed as though she diffused a sort of light which was 
peculiar to herself. In that narrow chamber, surrounded by 
that sombre frame of hangings and woodwork, she was incom- 
parably more beautiful and more radiant than on the public 
square. She was like a torch which has suddenly been 
brought from broad daylight into the dark. The noble dam- 
sels were dazzled by her in spite of themselves. Each one 
felt herself, in some sort, Wounded in her beauty. Hence, 
their battle front (may we be allowed the expression,) was 
immediately altered, although they exchanged not a single 
Word. But they understood each other perfectly. Women’s 
instincts comprehend and respond to each other more quickly 
than the intelligences of men. An enemy had just arrived ; 
ail felt it — ail rallied together. One drop of wine is suffi- 
cient to tinge a glass of Avater red ; to diffuse a certain degree 
of ill temper throughout a whole assembly of pretty women, 
the arrivai of a prettier woman sufîices, especially Avhen there 
is but one man présent. 

Hence the welcome accorded to the gypsy was marvellously 
glacial. They surveyed her from head to foot, then ex- 
changed glances, and ail was saidj they understood each 
other. Meanwhile, the young girl was waiting to be spoken 
to, in such émotion that she dared not raise her eyelids. 

The captain was the first to break the silence. Upon my 
word,’^ said he, in his tone of intrepid fatuity, ^^here is a 
charming créature ! What think you of her, fair cousin ? 

This remark, which a more délicate admirer would hâve 
uttered in a lower tone, at least was not of a nature to dissi- 
pate the féminine jealousies which were on the alert before 
the gypsy. 


CONFIDING ONF’ S SECRET TO A GO AT. H 

Fleur-de-Lys replied to the captain with a bland affectation 
of disdain, — “Not bad/^ 

The others whispered. 

At length, Madame Aloïse, who was not the less jealous 
because she was so for her daughter, addressed the dancer, — 

^^Approach, little one.’’ 

Approach, little one ! ’’ repeated, with comical dignity, 
little Bérangère, who would hâve reached about as high as her 
hips. 

The gypsy advanced towards the noble dame. 

‘‘Fair child/’ said Phœbus, with emphasis, taking sevçral 
steps towards her, I do not know whether I hâve the 
suprême honor of being recognized by you.’^ 

She interrupted him, with a smile and a look full of infi- 
nité sweetness, — 

Oh ! yes,” said she. 

She has a good memory,’^ remarked Fleur-de-Lys. 

Corne, now,’’ resumed Phœbus, ^^you escaped nimbly the 
other evening. Did I frighten you ! ’’ 

Oh ! no,’^ said the gypsy. 

There was in the intonation of that Oh ! no,” uttered 
after that Oh ! yes,” an ineffable something which wounded 
Fleur-de-Lys. 

You left me in your stead, my beauty,” pursued the cap- 
tain, whose tongue was unloosed when speaking to a girl 
out of the Street, ^^a crabbed knave, one-eyed and hunch- 
backed, the bishop’s bellringer, I believe. I hâve been told 
that by birth he is the bastard of an archdeacon and a devil. 
He has a pleasant name : he is called Quatre-Temps (Ember 
Days), Pâques-Fleur les (Palm Sunday), Mardi- Gras (Shrove 
Tuesday), I know not what ! The name of some festival when 
the bells are pealed ! So he took the liberty of carrying you 
ofî, as though you were made for beadles ! ^Tis too much, 
What the devil did that screech-owl want with you ? Hey, 
tell me ! ” 

I do not know,” she replied. 

“ The inconceivable impudence ! A bellringer carrying off 
a wench, like a vicomte ! a lout poaching on the game of gentle- 


12 


NOTRE-DAME. 


men ! that is a rare piece of assurance. However, he paid 
dearly for it. Master Pierrat Torterue is the harshest groom 
that ever curried a knave ; and I can tell you, if it will be 
agreeable to you, that your bellringer’s hide got a thorough 
dressing at his hands.’’ 

“ Poor man ! ” said the gypsy, in whom these words revived 
the memory of the pillory. 

The captain burst out laughing. 

Corne-de-bœuf ! here’s pity as well placed as a feather in 
a pig’s tail ! May I hâve as big a belly as a pope, if — 

He stopped short. Pardon me, ladies ; I believe that I 
was on the point of saying something foolish.’^ 

Pie, sir ! ” said la Gaillefontaine. 

He talks to that créature in her own tongue ! ” added 
Pleur-de-Lys, in a low tone, her irritation increasing every 
moment. This irritation was not diminished when she beheld 
the captain, enchanted with the gipsy, and, most of ail, with 
himself, execute a pirouette on his heel, repeating with coarse, 
naïve, and soldierly gallantry, — 

A handsome wench, upon my soûl ! ’’ 

“ Pather savagely dressed,’’ said Diane de Christeuil, laugh- 
ing to show her fine teeth. 

This remark was a flash of light to the others. Not being 
able to impugn her beauty, they attacked her costume. 

That is true,’’ said la Montmichel ; “ what makes you run 
about the streets thus, without guimpe or ruff ? 

^^That petticoat is so short that it makes one tremble,’’ 
added la Gaillefontaine. 

“ My dear,” continued Pleur-de-Lys, with decided sharpness, 
“You will get yourself taken up by the sumptuary police for 
your gilded girdle.” 

“ Little one, little one,” resumed la Christeuil, with an im- 
placable smile,” if you were to put respectable sleeves upon 
your arms they would get less sunburned.” 

It was, in truth, a spectacle worthy of a more intelligent 
spectator than Phœbus, to see how these beautiful maidens, 
with their envenomed and angry tongues, wound, serpent 
like, and glided and writhed around the Street dancer. They 


CONFIBING ONE’ S SECliET TO A GO AT. 


13 


were cruel and graceful ; they searched and rummaged mali- 
ciously in lier poor and silly toilet of spangles and tinsel. 
There was^ no end to tlieir laughter, irony, and humiliation. 
Sarcasms rained down upon the gypsy, and haughty conde- 
scension and malevolent looks. One would hâve thought 
they were young Roman, dames thrusting golden pins into the 
breast of a beautiful slave. One would hâve pronounced 
them élégant grayhounds, circling, with inflated nostrils, round 
a poor woodland fawn, whom the glance of their master 
forbade them to devour. 

After ail, what was a misérable dancer on the public squares 
in the presence of these high-born maidens ? They seemed 
to take no heed of her presence, and talked of her aloud, to 
her face, as of something unclean, abject, and y et, at the 
same time, passably pretty. 

The gypsy was not insensible to these pin-pricks. From 
time to time a fiush of shame, a flash of anger inflamed her 
eyes or her cheeks 5 with disdain she made that little grimace 
with which the reader is already familiar, but she remained 
motionless ; she fixed on Phœbus a sad, sweet, resigned look. 
There was also happiness and tenderness in that gaze. One 
would hâve said that she endured for fear of being expelled. 

Phœbus laughed, and took the gypsy’s part with a mixture 
of impertinence and pity. 

“ Let them talk, little one ! ” he repeated, jingling his golden 
spurs. No doubt your toilet is a little extravagant and wild, 
but what différence does that make with such a charming 
damsel as yourself ? ” 

Good gracions ! exclaimed the blonde Gaillefontaine, 
drawing up her swan-like throat, with a bitter smile. I see 
that messieurs the archers of the king’s police easily take fire 
at the handsome eyes of gypsies ! 

Why not ? ’’ said Phœbus. 

At this reply uttered carelessly by the captain, like a stray 
stone, whose fall one does not even watch. Colombe began to 
laugh, as well as Diane, Amelotte, and Fleur-de-Lys, into 
whose eyes at the same time a tear started. 

The gypsy, who had dropped her eyes on the floor at the 


14 


NOTRE-DAME. 


words of Colombe de Gaillefontaine, raised them beaming with 
joy and pride and fixed tbem once more on Pbœbus. Slie was 
very beautiful at that moment. 

The old dame, who was watching this scene, felt offended, 
without understanding why. 

“ Holy Virgin ! she suddenly exclaimed, what is it ' 
moving about my legs ? Ah ! the villanous beast ! ” 

It was the goat, who had just arrived, in search of his mis- 
tress, and who, in dashing towards the latter, had begun by 
entangling his horns in the pile of stuffs which the noble 
dame’s garments heaped up on her feet when she was seated. 

This created a diversion. The gypsy disentangled his 
horns without uttering a word. 

Oh ! here’s the little goat with golden hoofs ! ’’ exclaimed 
Bérangère, dancing with joy. 

The gypsy crouched down on her knees and leaned her 
cheek against the fondling head of the goat. One would hâve 
said that she was asking pardon for having quitted it thus. 
Meanwhile, Diane had bent down to Colombe’s ear. 

Ah ! good heavens ! why did not I think of that sooner ? 
’Tis the gypsy with the goat. They say she is a sorceress, 
and that her goat executes very miraculous tricks.’^ 

^^Well!^^ said Cololnbe, ^^the goat must now amuse us in 
its turn, and perform a miracle for us.’’ 

Diane and Colombe eagerly addressed the gypsy. 

Little one, make your goat perform a miracle.” 

I do not know what you mean,” replied the dancer. 

A miracle, a piece of magic, a bit of sorcery, in short.” 
do not understand.” And she fell to caressing the 
pretty animal, repeating, ^^Djali! Djali!” 

At that moment Fleur-de^Êys- poticed a little bag of em- 
broidered leather suspended from the neck of the goat, — 

“ What is that ? ” she asked of the gipsy. 

The gipsy raised her large eyes upon her and replied 
gravely, — 

“ That is my secret.” 

I should really like to know what your secret is,” thought 
Fleur-de-Lys. 


CONFIBING ONE’ S SECRET TO A GO AT. 


15 


Meanwhile, the good dame had risen angrily, — Corne 
now, gypsy, if neither you nor yoiir goat can dance for us, 
what are you doing here ? 

The gypsy walked slowly towards the door, without mak- 
ing any reply. But the nearer she approached it, thè more 
her pace slackened. An irrésistible magnet seemed to hold 
lier. Suddenly she turned her eyes, wet with tears, towards 
Phœbus, and halted. 

“ True God ! ” exclaimed the captain, that’s not the way 
to départ. Corne back and dance something for us. By the 
way, my sweet love, what is your naine ? ” 

‘‘La Esmeralda,’^ said the dancer, never taking her eyes 
from him. 

At this strange name, a burst of wild laughter broke from 
the young girls. 

“ Here’s a terrible name for a young lady,’’ said Diane. 

“You seé well enough,” retorted Amelotte, “that she is an 
enchantress.” 

“ My dear,” exclaimed Dame Aloïse solemnly, “your parents 
did not commit the sin of giving you that name at the baptis- 
mal font.” 

In the meantime, several minutes previously, Bérangère had 
coaxed the goat into a corner of the room with a marchpane 
cake, without any one having noticed her. In an instant they 
had become good friends. The curions child had detached 
the bag from the goat’ s neck, had opened it, and had emptied 
ont its contents on the rush matting ; it was an alphabet, each 
letter of which was separately inscribed on a tiny block of 
boxwood. Hardly had these playthings been spread ont on 
the matting, when the child, with surprise, beheld the goat 
(one of whose “ miracles ” this was no doubt), draw out cer- 
tain letters with its golden hoof, and arrange them, with 
gentle pushes, in a certain order. In a moment they consti- 
tuted a Word, which the goat seemed to hâve been trained to 
Write, so little hésitation did it show in forming it, and Béran- 
gère suddenly exclaimed, clasping her hands in admiration, — 

“Godmother Fleur-de-Lys, see what the goat has just 
done ! ” 


16 


NOTUE-BAME. 


Fleur-de-Lys ran up and trembled. The letters arranged 
iipon the fioor formed this word, — 

PHŒBUS, 

“ Was it the goat who wrote that ? she inquired in a 
changed voice. 

“ YeSj godmother/’ replied Bérangère. 

It was impossible to donbt it ; the child did not know how 
to Write. 

This is the secret ! ” thought Fleur-de-Lys. 

Meanwhile, at the child’s exclamation, ail had hastened up, 
the mother, the young girls, the gypsy, and the officer. 

The gypsy beheld the piece of folly which the goat had com- 
mitted. She turned red, then pale, and began to tremble like 
a culprit before the captain, who gazed at lier with a smile of 
satisfaction and amazement. 

Phœbus ! whispered the young girls, stupefied : Tis 
the captain’s naine ! ” 

^^You hâve a marvellous memory!” said Fleur-de-Lys, to 
the petrified gipsy. Then, bursting into sobs : — Oh ! ’’ she 
stammered mournfully, hiding her face in both lier beautiful 
hands, she is a magician ! ” And she heard another and a 
still more bitter voice at the bottom of her heart, saying, — 
She is a rival ! 

She fell fainting. 

My daughter ! my daughter ! ’’ cried the terrified mother. 
Begone, you gypsy of hell ! ’’ 

In a twinkling, La Esmeralda gathered up the unlucky 
letters, made a sign to Ljali, and went ont through one door, 
while Fleur-de-Lys was being carried out through the other. 

Captain Phœbus, on being left alone, hesitated for a moment 
between the two doors, then he followed the gypsy. 



CHAPTER II. 

A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. 

The priest whom the young girls had observed at the top of 
the North. tower, leaning over the Place and so attentive to the 
dance of the gypsy, was, in fact, Archdeacon Claude Erollo. 

Onr readers hâve not forgotten the mysterious cell which 
the archdeacon had reserved for himself in that tower. (I do 
not know, by the way be it said, whether it be not the same, 
the interior of which can be seen to-day through a little square 
window, opening to the east at the height of a man above the 
platform f rom which the towers spring ; a bare and dilapi- 
dated den, whose badly plastered walls are ornamented here 
and there, at the présent day, with some wretched yellow 
engravings representing the façades of cathedrals. I présumé 
that this hole is jointly inhabited by bats and spiders, and 
that, consequently, it wages a double war of extermination 
on the Aies). 

Every day, an hour before sunset, the archdeacon ascended 
the staircase to the tower, and shut himself up in this cell, 
where he sometimes passed whole nights. That day,.at the 
moment when, standing before the low door of his retreat, he 
was fitting into the lock the complicated little key which he 
always carried about him in the purse suspended to his side, 
a, Sound of tambourine and castanets had reached his ear. 
These sounds came from the Place du Parvis. The cell, as we 
hâve already said, had only one window opening upon the reai 

17 


18 


NOTBE-BAME. 


of tlie church. Claude Frollo had hastily withdrawn the key, 
and an instant later, he was on the top of the tower, in the 
gloomy and pensive attitude in which the maidens had seen 
him. 

There he stood, grave, motionless, absorbed in one look and 
one thought. AU Paris lay at his feet, with the thousand spires 
of its édifices and its circular horizon of gentle hills — with 
its river winding under its bridges, and its people moving to 
and fro through its Street s, — with the clouds of its smoke, — 
with the mountainous chain of its roofs which presses Notre- 
Dame in its doubled folds ; but out of ail the city, the arch- 
deacon gazed at one corner only of the pavement, the Place du 
Parvis ; in ail that throng at but one figure, — the gypsy. 

It would hâve been difîicult to say what was the nature of this 
look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It 
was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and 
tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole 
body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as 
a tree is moved by the wind ; from the stiffness of his elbows, 
more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or 
the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face, — 
one would hâve said that nothing living was left about Claude 
Frollo except his eyes. 

The gypsy was dancing ; she was twirling her tambourine 
on the tip of her finger, and tossing it into the air as she 
danced Provençal sarabands ; agile, light, joyous, and uncon- 
scious of the formidable gaze which descended perpendicularly 
upon her head. 

The crowd was swarming around her ; from time to time, a 
man accoutred in red and yellow made them form into a circle, 
and theii returned, seated himself on a chair a few paces from 
the dajicer, and took the goat’s head on his knees. This man 
seemed to be the gypsy’s companion. Claude Frollo could not 
distinguish his features from his elevated post. 

From the moment when the archdeacon caught sight of this 
stranger, his attention seemed divided between him and the 
dancer, and his face became more and more gloomy. Ail at 
once he rose upright, and a quiver ran through his whole 


A PRIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER. 19 

body : “ Who is that man ?” he muttered between bis teeth : 
“ I bave always seen ber alone before ! ” 

Tben be plunged down beneatb tbe tortuous vault of tbe 
spiral staircase, and once more descended. As be passed tbe 
door of tbe bell cbamber, wbicb was ajar, be saw sometbing 
wbicb struck bim ; be bebeld Quasimodo, wbo, leaning tbrougb 
an opening of one of tbose slate pentbouses wbicb resemble 
en ornions blinds, appeared also to be gazing at tbe Place. He 
was engaged in so profound a contemplation, tbat be did not 
notice tbe passage of bis adopted fatber. His savage eye bad 
a singnlar expression ; it was a cbarmed, tender look. “ This 
is strange ! ” murmured Claude. Is it tbe gypsy at wbom 
be is tbus gazing ? ” He continued bis descent. At tbe end 
of a few minutes, tbe anxious arcbdeacon entered upon tbe 
Place from tbe door at tbe base of tbe tower. 

Wbat bas become of tbe gypsy girl ? ” be said, mingling 
witb tbe group of spectators wbicb tbe Sound of tbe tambour- 
ine bad collected. 

I know not,” replied one of bis neigbbors, I tbink tbat 
sbe bas gone to make sonie of ber fandangoes in tbe bouse 
opposite, wbitber tbey bave called ber.” 

In tbe place of tbe gypsy, on tbe carpet, wbose arabesques 
bad seemed to vanisb but a moment previously by tbe capri- 
cious figures of ber dance, tbe arcbdeacon no longer bebeld 
any one but tbe red and yellow man, wbo, in order to earn a 
few testers in bis turn, was walking round tbe circle, witb bis 
elbows on bis bips, bis bead tbrown back, his face red, his 
neck outstretched, witb a chair between his teeth. To tbe 
chair he bad fastened a cat, wbicb a neighbor bad lent, and 
wbicb was spitting in great affright. 

^^Hotre-Dame ! ” exclaimed tbe arcbdeacon, at tbe moment 
when tbe juggler, perspiring heavily, passed in front of bim 
witb his pyramid of chair and bis cat, “ Wbat is Master 
Pierre Gringoire doing here ? ” 

Tbe barsh voice of tbe arcbdeacon tbrew tbe poor fellow 
into such a commotion tbat be lost bis equilibrium, together 
witb his whole édifice, and tbe chair and tbe cat tumbled pell- 
mell upon tbe heads of tbe spectators, in tbe midst of inex- 
tinguishable hootings. 


20 


NOTRE-DAME, 


It is probable that Master Pierre Gringoire (for it was in- 
deed he) would bave had a sorry account to settle with the 
neigbbor wbo owned the cat, and ail the bruised and scratched 
faces which surrounded him, if he had not hastened to profit 
by the tumnlt to take refuge in the church, whither Claude 
Prollo had made him a sign to follow him. 

The cathédral was already dark and deserted ; the side-aisles 
were full of shadows, and the lanips of the chapels began to 
shine ont like stars, so black had the vaulted ceiling become. 
Only the great rose window of the façade, whose thousand 
colors were steeped in a ray of horizontal sunlight, glittered 
in the glooin like a mass of diamonds, and threw its dazzling 
reflection to the other end of the nave. 

When they had advanced a few paces, Dom Claude placed 
his back against a pillar, and gazed intently at Gringoire. 
The gaze was not the one which Gringoire feared, ashamed as 
he was of having been caught by a grave and learned person 
in the costume of a buffoon. There was nothing mocking or 
ironical in the priest’s glance, it was serions, tranquil, pierc- 
ing. The archdeacon was the first to break the silence. 

Corne now. Master Pierre. You are to explain many 
things to me. And first of ail, how cornes it that you hâve 
not been seen for two months, and that now one finds you in 
the public squares, in a fine equipment in truth ! Motley red 
and yellow, like a Caudebec apple ? ’’ 

Messire,” said Gringoire, piteously, it is, in fact, an amaz- 
ing accoutrement. You see me no more comfortable in it 
than a cat coiffed with a calabash. ’Tis very ill done, I am 
conscious, to expose messieurs the sergeants of the watch to 
the liability of cudgelling beneath this cassock the humérus 
of a Pythagorean philosopher. But what would you hâve, 
my reverend master? ’tis the fault of my ancient jerkin, 
which abandoned me in cowardly wise, at the beginning of 
the winter, under the pretext that it was falling into tatters, 
and that it required repose in the basket of a rag-picker. 
What is one to do ? Civilization has not yet arrived at the 
point where one can go stark naked, as ancient Diogenes 
wished. Add that a very cold wind was blowing, and Tis not 


A PRIE ST AND A PHILOSOPHER. 21 

in the inonth of J anuary that one can successfully attempt to 
make humanity take this new step. This garment presented 
itself, I took it, and I left my ancient black smock, which, for 
a hermetic like myself, was far from being bermetically 
closed. Behold me then, in the garments of a stage-player, 
like Saint Genest. What would you bave ? ’tis an éclipsé. 
Apollo himself tended the llocks of Admetus.’’ 

‘‘^Tis a fine profession that you are engaged in ! replied 
the archdeacon. 

I agréé, my master, that ’tis better to philosophize and 
poetize, to blow the fiame in the furnace, or to reçoive it from 
heaven, than to carry cats on a shield. So, when you ad- 
dressed me, I was as foolish as an ass before a turnspit. But 
what would you hâve, messire ? One must eat every day, and 
the finest Alexandrine verses are not worth a bit of Brie 
cheese. Now, I made for Madame Marguerite of Flanders, 
that famous epithalamium, as you know, and the city will not 
pay me, under the pretext that it was not excellent ; as 
though one could give a tragedy of Sophocles for four crowns ! 
Henoe, I was on the point of dying with hunger. Happily, 
I found that I was rather strong in the jaw; so I said to this 
jaw, — perform some feats of strength and of equilibrium : 
nourish thyself. Aie te ipsam. A pack of beggars who hâve 
become my good friends, hâve taught me twenty sorts of 
herculean feats, and now I give to my teeth every evening the 
bread which they hâve earned during the day by the sweat 
of my brow. After ail, concedo, I grant that it is a sad em- 
ployment for my intellectual faculties, and that man is not 
made to pas s his life in beating the tambourine and biting 
chairs. But, reverend master, it is not sufficient to pass one’s 
life, one must earn the means for life.’’ 

Dom Claude listened in silence. Ail at once his deep-set 
eye assumed so sagacious and penetrating an expression, that 
Gringoire felt himself, so to speak, searched to the bottom of 
the soûl by that glance. 

Very good. Master Pierre ; but how cornes it that you are 
now in company with that gypsy dancer ? ” 

“ In faith ! ” said Gringoire, ’tis because she is my wife 
and I am her husband.” 


22 


NOTBE-BAME. 


The priest’s gloomy eyes fiashed into fiame. 

Hâve you done that, you wretch ! ’’ he cried, seizing Grin* 
goire’s arm with fury ; hâve you been so abandoned by God 
as to raise your hand against that girl ? 

my chance of paradise, monseigneur/’ replied Grin- 
goire, trembling in every limb, “I swear to you that I hâve 
never touched her^ if that is what disturbs you.” 

Then why do you talk of husband and wife ? ” said the priest. 

Gringoire made haste to relate to him as succinctly as pos- 
sible, ail that the reader already knows, his adventure in the 
Court of Miracles and the broken-crock marriage. It ap- 
peared, moreover, that this marriage had led to no results 
whatever, and that each evening the gypsy giii cheated him 
of his nuptial right as on the first day. ’Tis a mortifica- 
tion,” he said in conclusion, but that is because I hâve had 
the misfortune to wed a virgin.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” demanded the archdeacon, who had 
been gradually appeased by this récital. 

^‘’Tis very difficult to explain,” replied the poet. ^^It is 
a superstition. My wife is, according to what an old thief, 
who is called among us the Duke of Egypt, has told me, a 
foundling or a lost child, which is the saine thing. She wears 
on her neck an amulet which, it is affirmed, will cause her to 
meet her parents some day, but which will lose its virtue if 
the young girl loses hers. Hence it follows that both of us 
remain very virtuous.” 

So,” resumed Claude, whose brow cleared more and more, 
you believe. Master Pierre, that this créature has not been 
approached by any man ? ” 

“ What would you hâve a man do, Dom Claude, as against 
a superstition ? ^ She has got that in her head. I assuredly 
esteem as a rarity this nunlike prudery which is preserved 
untamed amid those Bohemian girls who are so easily brought 
into subjection. But she has three things to protect her : the 
Duke of Egypt, who has taken her under his safeguard, reck- 
oning, perchance, on selling her to some gay abbe ; ail his 
tribe, who hold her in singular vénération, like a Hotre-Dame; 
and a certain tiny poignard, which the buxom dame always 


A P RIE ST AND A PHILOSOPHER. 


23 


wears about ber, in some nook, in spite of the ordinances of 
the provost, and which one causes to fly out into her liands 
by squeezing her waist. ’Tis a proud wasp, I can tell you! ” 

The archdeacon pressed Gringoire with questions. 

La Esmeralda, in the judgment of Gringoire, was an inoffen- 
sive and charining créature, pretty, with the exception of a 
pout which was peculiar to her ; a naïve and passionate dam- 
sel, ignorant of everything and enthusiastic about everything ; 
not yet aware of the différence between a man and a woman, 
even in her dreains ; inade like that ; wild especially over 
dancing, noise, the open air ; a sort of woman bee, with in- 
visible wings on her feet, and living in a whirlwind. She 
owed this nature to the wandering life which she had always 
led. Gringoire had succeeded in learning that, while a mere 
child, she had traversed Spain and Catalonia, even to Sicily ; 
he believed that she had even been taken by the caravan of 
Zingari, of which she formed a part, to the kingdom of Algiers, 
a country situated in Achaia, which country adjoins, on one 
side Albania and Greece ; on the other, the Sicilian Sea, which 
is the road to Constantinople. The Bohemians, said Gringoire, 
were vassals of the King of Algiers, in his quality of chief of 
the White Moors. One thing is certain, that la Esmeralda 
had corne to France while still very young, by way of Hun- 
gary. From ail these countries the young girl had brought 
back fragments of queer jargons, songs, and strange ideas, 
which made her language as motley as her costume, half 
Parisian, half African. However, the people of the quarters 
which she frequented loved her for her gayety, her daintiness, 
her lively manners, her dances, and her songs. She believed 
herself to be hated, in ail the city, by but two persons, of 
whom she often spoke in terror: the sacked nun of the 
Tour-Eoland, a villanous recluse who cherished some secret 
grudge against these gypsies, and who cursed the poor dancer 
every time that the latter passed before her window ; and a 
priest, who never met her without casting at her looks and 
words which frightened her. 

The mention of this last circumstance disturbed the arch- 
deacon greatly, though Gringoire paid no attention to his 


24 


NOTRE-DAME. 


perturbation; to sucb an extent had two months sufficed to 
cause tbe heedless poet to forget the singular details of the 
evening on wMch be bad met tbe gypsy, and tbe presence of 
tbe arcbdeacon in it ail. Otberwise, tbe little dancer feared 
notbing ; sbe did not tell fortunes, wbicb protected ber 
against tbose trials for magic wbicb were so frequently insti- 
tuted against gypsy women. And tben, Gringoire beld tbe 
position of ber brotber, if not of ber busband. After ail, tbe 
philosopher endured tbis sort of platonic marriage very 
patiently. It meant a sbelter and bread at least. Every 
morning, he set out from the lair of the tbieves, generally 
with the gypsy ; he belped ber make ber collections of 
targes * and little blanks t in the squares ; eacb evening be 
returned to the same roof witb ber, allowed ber to boit ber- 
self into ber little chamber, and slept the sleep of tbe just. 
A very sweet existence, taking it ail in ail, be said, and well 
adapted to revery. And then, on bis soûl and conscience, tbe 
philosopher was not very sure tbat be was madly in love witb 
the gypsy. He loved ber goat almost as dearly. It was a 
cbarming animal, gentle, intelligent, clever; a learned goat. 
Notbing was more common in tbe Middle Ages than these 
learned animais, wbicb amazed people greatly, and often led 
tbeir instructors to tbe stake. But the witcbcraft of the goat 
witb the golden boofs was a very innocent species of magie. 
Gringoire explained tbem to tbe arcbdeacon, wbom these 
details seemed to interest deeply. In tbe majority of cases, 
it was sufficient to présent tbe tambourine to the goat in 
sucb or sucb a manner, in order to obtain from bim tbe trick 
desired. He had been trained to tbis by the gypsy, wbo pos- 
sessed, in these délicate arts, so rare a talent tbat two months 
bad sufficed to teacb tbe goat to Write, with movable letters, 
the Word Phœbus.’^ 

^ Phœbus ! ’ ’’ said the priest ; why ^ Pbœbus ’ ? ’’ 

I know not,” replied Gringoire. Perbaps it is a word 
wbicb sbe believes to be endowed with some magic and secret 
virtue. Sbe often repeats it in a low tone when sbe tbinks 
tbat sbe is alone.” 

* An ancient Burgundian coin. t An ancient French coin. 


A PBIEST AND A PHILOSOPHER. 25 

“Are you sure/’ persisted Claude, with his penetrating 
glance, “ that it is only a word and not a name ? ” 

“ The name of whoni ? ” said the poet. 

“ How should I know ? ” said the priest. 

“ This is what I imagine, messire. These Bohemians are 
something like Guebrs, and adore the sun. Hence, Phœbus.” 

“ That does not seem so clear to me as to you. Master 
Pierre/’ 

“After ail, that does not concern me. Let her mumble her 
Phœbus at her pleasure. One thing is certain, that Djali loves 
me almost as much as he does her.” 

“ Who is Djali ? ” 

“The goat.” 

The archdeacon dropped his chin into his hand, and ap- 
peared to reflect for a moment. Ail at once he turned abruptly 
to Gringoire once more. 

“And do you swear to me that you hâve not touched 
her ? / 

“ Whom ? ” said Gringoire ; “ the goat ? ” 

“ hTo, that woman.” 

“ My wife ? I swear to you that I hâve not.” 

“ You are often alone with her ? ” 

“ A good hour every evening.” 

Dom Claude frowned. 

“ Oh ! oh ! Solus cum sola non cogitahuntur orare Pater 
Noster.'^’ 

“ Upon my soûl, I could say the Pater, and the Ave Maria, 
and the Credo in Deum jpatrem omnipotentem without her 
paying any more attention to me than a chicken to a church.” 

“ Swear to me, by the body of your mother,” repeated the 
archdeacon violently, “ that you hâve not touched that créature 
with even the tip of your finger.” 

“ I will also swear it by the head of my father, for the two 
things hâve more affinity between them. But, my reverend 
master, permit me a question in my turn.” 

“ Speak, sir.” 

“ What concern is it of yours ? ” 

The archdeacon’s pale face became as crimson as the cheek 


26 


NOTBE-BAME. 


of a young girl. He remained for a moment witliout answering ; 
then, with visible embarrassment, — 

“ Listen, Master Pierre Gringoire. You are not yet damned, 
so far as I know. I take an interest in you, and wisb you 
welL Now the least contact with that Egyptian of the démon 
would make you the vassal of Satan. You know that ’tis 
always the body which ruins the soûl. Woe to you if you 
approach that woman ! That is ail.” 

I tried once,” said Gringoire, scratching his ear ; it was 
the first day : but I got stung.” 

“You were so audacious. Master Pierre?” and the priesPs 
brow clouded over again. 

“ On another occasion,” continued the poet, with a smile, “ I 
peeped through the keyhole, before going to bed, and I beheld 
the most delicious dame in her shift that ever made a bed 
creak under her bare foot.” 

“ Go to the devil ! ” cried the priest, with a terrible look ; 
and, giving the amazed Gringoire a push on the shoulders, he 
plunged, with long strides, under the gloomiest arcades of the 
cathédral. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE BELLS. 

After the morning in the pillory, the neighbors of Notre- 
Dame thought they noticed that Quasimodo’s ardor for ring- 
iiig had grown cool. Formerly, there had been peals for 
every occasion, long morning serenades, which lasted from 
prime to compline ; peals from the belfry for a high mass, 
rich scales drawn over the smaller bells for a wedding, for a 
christening, and mingling in the air like a rich embroidery of 
ail sorts of charming sounds. The old chiirch, ail vibrating 
and sonorous, was in a perpétuai joy of bells. One was con- 
stantly conscious of the presence of a spirit of noise and 
caprice, who sang through ail those mouths of brass. Now 
that spirit seemed to hâve departed; the. cathédral seemed 
gloomy, and gladly remained silent; festivals and funerals 
had the simple peal, dry and bare, denianded by the ritual, 
nothing more. Of the double noise which constitutes a 
church, the organ within, the bell without, the organ alone 
remained. One would hâve said that there was no longer a 
musician in the belfry. Quasimodo was always there, never- 
theless ; what, then, had happened to him ? Was it that the 
shame and despair of the pillory still lingered in the bottom 
of his heart, that the lashes of his tormentor’s whip rever- 
berated unendingly in his soûl, and that the sadness of such 
treatment had wholly extinguished in him even his passion 
for the bells ? or was it that Marie had a rival in the heart 
of the bellringer of Notre-Dame, and that the great bell and 

27 


28 


NOTBE-DAMJE. 


her fourteen sisters were neglected for something more amia 
ble and more beautiful ? 

It chanced that, in the yéar of grâce 1482, Annnnciation 
Day fell on Tuesday, the twenty-fifth of March. That day 
the air was so pure and light that Quasimodo felt some re- 
turning affection for his bells. He therefore ascended the 
northern tower while the beadle below was opening wide the 
doors of the church, which were then enorinous panels of stout 
wood, covered with leather, bordered with nails of gilded iron, 
and framed in carvings very artistically elaborated/’ 

On arriving in the lofty bell chamber, Quasimodo gazed for 
some time at the six bells and shook his head sadly, as though 
groaning over some foreign element which had interposed 
itself in his heart between them and him. But when he had 
set them to swinging, when he felt that cluster of bells mov- 
ing under his hand, when he saw, for he did not hear it, the 
palpitating octave ascend and descend that sonorous scale, like 
a bird hopping from branch to branch ; when the démon 
Music, that démon who shakes a sparkling bundle of strette, 
trills and arpeggios, had taken possession of the poor deaf 
man, he became happy once more, he forgot everything, and 
his heart expanding, made his face beam. 

He went and came, he beat his hands together, he ran from 
rope to rope, he animated the six singers with voice and ges- 
ture, like the leader of an orchestra who is urging on intelli- 
gent musicians. 

Go on,^’ said he, go on, go on, Gabrielle, pour out ail thy 
noise into the Place, ’tis a festival to-day. No laziness, Thi- 
bauld ; thon art relaxing ; go on, go on, then, art thon rusted, 
thou sluggard ? That is well ! quick ! quick ! let not thy 
clapper be seen ! Make them ail deaf like me. That’s it, 
Thibauld, bravely done ! Guillaume ! Guillaume ! thou art 
the largest, and Pasquier is the smallest, and Pasquier does 
best. Let us wager that those who hear him will understand 
him better than they understand thee. Good ! good ! my 
Gabrielle, stoutly, more stoutly ! Eh ! what are you doing up 
aloft there, you two Moineaux (sparrows) ? I do not see you 
making the least little shred of noise. What is the meaning 


THE BELLS. 


29 


% 

of those beaks of copper whicb seem to be gaping when they 
should sing ? Corne, work now, ’tis the Feast of the Annun- 
ciation. The sun is fine, the chime must be fine also. Poor 
Guillaume ! thou art ail out of breath, my big fellow ! ’’ 

He was wholly absorbed in spurring on his bells, ail six of 
which vied with each other in leaping and shaking their shin- 
ing haunches, like a noisy team of Spanish mules, pricked on 
here and there by the apostrophes of the muleteer. 

AU at once, on letting his glance fall between the large 
slate scales which cover the perpendicular wall of the bell 
tower at a certain height, he beheld on the square a young 
girl, fantastically dressed, stop, spread out on the ground a 
carpet, on which a small goat took up its post, and a group of 
spectators collect around her. This sight suddenly changed 
the course of his ideas, and congealed his enthusiasm as a 
breath of air congeals melted rosin. He halted, turned his 
back to the bells, and crouched down behind the projecting 
roof of slate, fixing upon the dancer that dreamy, sweet, and 
tender look which had already astonished the archdeacon on 
one occasion. Meanwhile, the forgotten bells died away 
abruptly and ail together, to the great disappointment of the 
loyers of bell ringing, who were listening in good faith to the 
peal from above the Pont du Change, and who went away 
dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and 
given a stone. 





CHAPTER IV. 

’ANArKH. 

It chanced that upon a fine morning in this saine month of 
March, I think it was on Saturday the 29th, Saint Enstache’s 
day, onr young friend the student, Jehan Frollo du Moulin, 
perceived, as he was dressing himself, that his breeches, which 
contained his purse, gave ont no metallic ring. “ Poor purse/’ 
he said, drawing it from his fob, what ! not the smallest 
parisis ! how cruelly the dice, beer-pots, and Venus hâve de- 
pleted thee ! How empty, wrinkled, limp, thou art ! Thou 
resemblest the throat of a fury ! I ask you, Messer Cicero, 
and Messer Seneca, copies of whom, ail dog’s-eared, I behold 
scattered on the floor, what profits it me to know, better than 
any governor of the mint, or any J ew on the Pont aux Chan- 
geurs, that a golden crowti stamped with a crown is worth 
thirty-five unzains of twenty-five sous, and eight deniers 
parisis apiece, and that a crown stamped with a crescent is 
worth thirty-six unzains of twenty-six sous, six deniers tour- 
nois apiece, if I hâve not a single wretched black liard to risk 
on the double-six ! Oh ! Consul Cicero ! this is no calamity 
from which one extricates one’s self with périphrases, quemad- 
modum, and verum enim vero ! ” 

He dressed himself sadly. An idea had occurred to him as 
he laced his boots, but he rejected it at first ; nevertheless, it 
returned, and he put on his waistcoat wrong side ont, an evi- 

30 


^ÂNArKH. 


31 


dent sign of violent internai combat. At last he dashed bis 
cap roughly on the floor, and exclaimed : “ So much the worse ! 
Let corne of it what may. I am going to my brother ! I 
shall catch a sermon, but I shall catch a crown.’^ 

Then he hastily donned his long jacket with furred half- 
sleeves, picked up his cap, and went out like a man driven to 
desperation. 

He descended the Eue de la Harpe toward the City. As he 
passed the Eue de la Huchette, the odor of those admirable 
spits, which were incessantly turning, tickled his olfactory 
apparatus, and he bestowed a loving glance toward the Cyclo- 
pean roast, which one day drew from the Franciscan friar, 
Calatagirone, this pathetic exclamation : Veramente, queste 
rôtisserie sono cosa stupenda ! * But Jehan had not the 
wherewithal to buy a breakfast, and he plunged, with a pro- 
found sigh, under the gateway of the Petit-Châtelet, that 
enormous double trefoil of massive towers which guarded the 
entrance to the City. 

He did not even take the trouble to cast a stone in passing, 
as was the usage, at the misérable statue of that Périnet 
Leclerc Avho had delivered up the Paris of Charles VI. to the 
English, a crime which his effigy, its face battered with 
stones and soiled with mud, expiated for three centuries at 
the corner of the Eue de la Harpe and the Eue de Buci, as in 
an eternal pillory. 

The Petit-Pont traversed, the Eue Heuve-Sainte-Genevieve 
crossed. Jehan de Molendino found himself in front of Hotre- 
Dame. Then indécision seized upon him once more, and he 
paced for several minutes round the statue of M. Legris, re- 
peating to himself with anguish : The sermon is sure, the 
Crown is doubtful.’^ 

He stopped a beadle who emerged from the cloister, — 
Where is monsieur the archdeacon of Josas ? ’’ 

I believe that he is in his secret cell in the tower,” said 
the beadle ; I should advise you not to disturb him there, 
unless you corne from some one like the pope or monsieur the 
king.’^ 

* Truly, these roastings are a stupendous thing ! 


32 


NOTUE-LAME. 


Jehan clapped his hands. 

Bédiahle ! here’s a magnificent chance to see the famous 
sorcery cell ! 

Tins reflection having brought him to a decision, he pliinged 
resolutely into the small black doorway, and began the 
ascent of the spiral of Saint-Gilles, which leads to the upper 
stories of the tower. I am going to see,’’ he said to himself 
on the way. By the ravens of the Holy Virgin ! it must 
needs be a curions thing, that cell which my reverend brother 
hides so secretly ! ^ Tis said that he lights up the kitchens 

of hell there, and that he cooks the philosopher’s stone there 
over a hot fire. Bédieu ! I care no more for the philosopher’s 
stone than for a pebble, and I would rather find over his fur- 
nace an omelette of Easter eggs and bacon, than the biggest 
philosopher’s stone in the world.’ ” 

On arriving at the gallery of slender columns, he took 
breath for a moment, and swore against the interminable 
staircase by I know not how many million cartloads of devils ; 
then he resumed his ascent through the narrow door of the 
north tower, now closed to the public. Several moments 
after passing the bell chamber, he came upon a little landing- 
place, built in a latéral niche, and under the vault of a low, 
pointed door, whose enormous lock and strong iron bars he 
was enabled to see through a loophole pierced in the opposite 
circular wall of the staircase. Persons désirons of visiting 
this door at the présent day will recognize it by this inscrip- 
tion engraved in white letters on the black wall : J’ ADOBE 
COKALIE, 1823. SIGNÉ UGÈNE.” “Signé” stands in 
the text. 

Ugh ! ” said the scholar ; ’tis here, no doubt.” 

The key was in the lock, the door was very close to him ; 
he gave it a gentle push and thrust his head through the 
opening. 

The reader cannot hâve failed to turn over the admirable 
Works of Bembrandt, that Shakespeare of painting. Amid so 
many marvellous engravings, there is one etching in particu- 
lar, which is supposed to represent Doctor Faust, and which 
it is impossible to contemplate without being dazzled. It rep- 


^ANÂFKH. 


33 


resents a gloomy cell ; in th.e centre is a table loaded witb 
hideons objects ; skulls, spheres, alembics, compassés, hiero- 
glypbic parchments. The doctor is before this table clad 
in his large coat and covered to the very eyebrows with his 
furred cap. He is visible only to his waist. He has half 
risen from his immense arm-chair, his clenched fists rest on 
the table, and he is gazing with curiosity and terror at a large 
luminous circle, formed of magic letters, which gleams from 
the Wall beyond, like the solar spectrum in a dark chamber. 
This cabalistic sun seems to tremble before the eye, and fills 
the wan cell with its mysterious radiance. It is horrible and 
it is beautiful. 

Something very similar to Faust’s cell presented itself to 
Jehan’s view, when he ventured his head through the half- 
open door. It also was a gloomy and sparsely lighted retreat. 
There also stood a large arm-chair and a large table, com- 
passés, alembics, skeletons of animais suspended from the 
ceiling, a globe rolling on the floor, hippocephali mingled 
promiscuously with drinking cups, in which quivered leaves of 
gold, skulls placed upon vellum checkered with figures and 
characters, huge manuscripts piled up wide open, without 
mercy on the cracking corners of the parchment ; in short, ail 
the rubbish of science, and everywhere on this confusion dust 
and spiders’ webs ; but there was no circle of luminous let- 
ters, no doctor in an ecstasy contemplating the flaming vision, 
as the eagle gazes upon the sun. 

Nevertheless, the cell was not deserted. A man was seated 
in the arm-chair, and bending over the table. J ehan, to whom 
his back was turned, could see only his shoulders and the 
back of his skull ; but he had no difficulty in recognizing that 
bald head, which nature had provided with an eternal tonsure, 
as though desirous of marking, by this external Symbol, the 
archdeacon’s irrésistible clérical vocation. 

Jehan accordingly recognized his brother; but the door 
had been opened so softly, that nothing warned Dom Claude of 
his presence. The inquisitive scholar took advantage of this 
circumstance to examine the cell for a few moments at his 
leisure. A large furnace, which he had not at first observed, 


34 


NOTBE-BAME. 


stood to the left of tlie arm-chair, beneath the window. The 
ray of light which penetrated through this aperture made its 
way through a spider’s circular web, which tastefully inscribed 
its délicate rose in the arch of the window, and in the centre 
of which the insect architect hiing motionless, like the hub 
of this wheel of lace. Upon the furnace were accumulated 
in disorder, ail sorts of vases, earthenware bottles, glass 
retorts, and mattresses of charcoal. Jehan observed, with a 
sigh, that there was no frying-pan. ‘‘ How cold the kitchen 
utensils are ! ’’ he said to himself. 

In fact, there was no lire in the furnace, and it seemed as 
though none had been lighted for a long time. A glass mask, 
which Jehan noticed among the utensils of alchemy, and 
which served no doubt, to protect the archdeacon’s face when 
he was working over some substance to be dreaded, lay in one 
corner covered with dust and apparently forgotten. Beside it 
lay a pair of bellows no less dusty, the upper side of which 
bore this inscription incrusted in copper letters : SPIRA 
SPERA 

Other inscriptions were written, in accordance with the 
fashion of the hermetics, in great numbers on the walls ; some 
traced with ink, others engraved with a métal point. There 
were, moreover, Gothic letters, Hebrew letters, Greek letters, 
and Roman letters, pell-mell ; the inscriptions overflowed at 
haphazard, on top of each other, the more recent elîacing the 
more ancient, and ail entangled with each other, like the 
branches in a thicket, like pikes in an affray. It was, in fact, 
a strangely confused mingling of ail human philosophies, ail 
reveries, ail human wisdom. Here and there one shone out 
from among the rest like a banner among lance heads. Gen- 
erally, it was a brief Greek or Roman device, such as the 
JMiddle Ages knew so well how to formulate. — Unde? Inde? 
— Homo homini monstrum — Astra, castra, nomen, numen . — 
Mèya §iSliov^ ^éya aaxoi’. — Sapere aude. Fiat ubi vult — etc.; 
sometimes a word devoid of ail apparent sense, "Avayxocpayia, 
which possibly contained a bitter allusion to the régime of the 
cloister; sometimes a simple maxim of clérical discipline 
formulated in a regular hexameter : Cœlestem dominum terres- 


^ANÂFKH. 


35 


trem dicite domnum. There was also Hebrew jargon, of which 
Jehan, who as yet knew but little Greek, understood noth- 
ing; and ail were traversed in every direction by stars, by 
ligures of men or animais, and by intersecting triangles ; and 
this contributed not a little to make the scrawled wall of the 
cell resemble a sheet of paper over which a monkey had 
drawn back and forth a pen lilled with ink. 

The whole chamber, moreover, presented a general aspect 
of abandonment and dilapidation ; and the bad State of the 
utensils induced the supposition that their owner had long 
been distracted from his labors by other préoccupations. 

Meanwhile, this master, bent over a vast manuscript, orna- 
mented with fantastical illustrations, appeared to be tor- 
mented by an idea which incessantly mingled with his médi- 
tations. That at least was Jehan’s idea, when he heard him 
exclaim, with the thoughtful breaks of a dreamer thinking 
aloud, — 

“Yes, Manou said it, and Zoroaster taught it ! the sun is 
born from lire, the moon from the sun ; fire is the soûl of the 
universe; its elementary atoms pour forth and flow inces- 
santly upon the world through infinité channels! At the 
point where these currents intersect each other in the 
heavens, they produce light; at their points of intersection 
on earth, they produce gold. Light, gold ; the same thing ! 
From lire to the concrète state. The différence between the 
visible and the palpable, between the fluid’ and the solid in 
the same substance, between water and ice, nothing more. 
These are no dreams ; it is the general law of nature. But 
what is one to do in order to extract from science the secret 
of this general law ? What ! this light which inundates my 
hand is gold ! These same atoms dilated in accordance with a 
certain law need only be condensed in accordance with an- 
other law. * How is it to be done ? Some hâve f ancied by 
bury ing a ray of sunlight, Averroës, — yes, Tis Averroës, — 
Averroës buried one under the first pillar on the left of the 
sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of 
Cordova ; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of 
ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after 
the lapse of eight thousand years. 


36 


NOTEE-BAME. 


^^The devil!’’ said Jehan, to himself, a long while to 
wait for a crown ! 

^^Others hâve thought/’ continued the dreamy archdeacon, 
^Hhat it would be better worth while to operate upon a 
ray of Sirius. But ^tis exceeding hard to obtain this ray 
pure, because of the simultaneous presence of other stars 
whose rays mingle with it. Flainel esteemed it more simple 
to operate upon terrestrial lire. Flamel ! there’s prédestina- 
tion in the name ! Flamma ! yes, fire. Ail lies there. The 
diamond is contained in the carbon, gold is in the fire. But 
how to extract it ? Magistri affirms that there are certain 
féminine names, which possess a charm so sweet and mysteri- 
ous, that it suffices to pronounce them during the operation. 
Let us read what Manon says on the matter : ‘ Where women 
are honored, the divinities are rejoiced ; where they are de- 
spised, it is useless to pray to God. The mouth of a woman 
is constantly pure ; it is a running water, it is a ray of sun- 
light. The name of a woman should be agreeable, sweet, 
fanciful; it should end in long vowels, and resemble words 
of bénédiction.’ Yes, the sage is right; in truth. Maria, 
Sophia, la Esmeral — Damnation ! always that thought î ” 

And he closed the book violently. 

He passed his hand over his brow, as though to brush away 
the idea which assailed him ; then he took from the table a 
nail and a small hammer, whose handle was curiously painted 
with cabalistic letters. 

For some time,” he said with a bitter smile, I hâve failed 
in ail my experiments ! one fixed idea possesses me, and sears 
my brain like fire. I hâve not even been able to discover the 
secret of Cassiodorus, whose lamp burned without wick and 
without oil. A simple matter, nevertheless — ” 

^‘The deuce ! ” muttered Jehan in his beard. 

^^Hence,” continued the priest, ‘^one wretched* thought is 
sufficient to render a man weak and beside himself ! Oh ! 
how Claude Femelle would laugh at me. She who could not 
turn Nicholas Flamel aside, for one moment, from his pur- 
suit of the great work ! What ’ I hold in my hand the magic 
hammer of Zéchiélé ! at every ' l?w dealt by the formidable 


^ANÂFKH. 


37 


rabbi, from tlie depths of bis cell, upon this nail, that one of 
his enemies whom he liad condemned, were be a tbousand 
leagues away, was buried a cubit deep in tbe eartb wbicb 
swallowed bim. ïbe King of France bimself, in conséquence 
of once baving inconsiderately knocked at tbe door of tbe 
tbermaturgist, sank to tbe knees throiigh tbe pavement of 
bis own Paris. Tbis took place tbree centuries ago. Well ! 
I possess tbe bammer and tbe nail, and in iny bands tbey are 
utensils no more formidable tban a club in tbe bands of a 
maker of edge tools. And yet ail that is required is to find 
tbe magic word wbicb Zécbiélé pronounced wben be struck 
his nail.’’ 

“ What nonsense ! ” thougbt Jehan. 

Let us see, let us try ! ” resumed tbe arcbdeacon briskly. 
^^Were I to succeed, I sbould bebold tbe blue spark flash 
from tbe head of tbe nail. Emen-Hétan ! Emen-Hétan ! 
That’s not it. Sigéani ! Sigéani ! May this nail open tbe 
tomb to any one who bears tbe name of Phœbus ! A curse 
upon it ! Always and eternally tbe same idea ! ” 

And he flung away tbe bammer in a rage. Then be sank 
down so deeply on tbe arm-chair and tbe table, that Jehan 
lost bim from view bebind tbe great pile of manuscripts. For 
tbe space of several minutes, ail that he saw was bis fist con- 
vulsively clencbed on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang 
up, seized a compass and engraved in silence upon tbe wall in 
capital letters, tbis Greek word 

\4NArKH. 

^^My brotber is mad,” said Jehan to himself ; “it would 
bave been far more simple to write Fatuniy every one is not 
obliged to know Greek.” 

The arcbdeacon returned and seated himself in his arm- 
chair, and placed his bead on both bis bands, as a sick man 
does, whose head is heavy and burning. 

Tbe student watched his brotber witb surprise. He did not 
know, he wbo wore his beart on his sleeve, he wbo observed 
only tbe good old law of Nature in tbe world, he who allowed 
bis passions to folio w tbeir inclinations, and in wbom tbe lake 


38 


NOTRE-BAME. 


of great émotions was always dry, so freely did he let it off 
each. day by fresh drains, — be did not know with what fury 
the sea of human passions ferments and boils when ail egress 
is denied to it, liow it accumulâtes, how it swells, how it over- 
flows, bow it bollows out tbe beart ; bow it breaks in inward 
sobs, and dull convulsions, until it bas rent its dikes and 
burst its bed. Tbe austere and glacial envelope of Claude 
Frollo, tbaf cold surface of steep and inaccessible virtue, 
bad always deceived Jeban. Tbe merry scbolar bad ne ver 
dreamed tbat tbere was boiling lava, furious and profound, 
beneatb tbe snowy brow of Ætna. 

We do not know wbether be suddenly became conscious of 
tbese tbings ; but, giddy as be was, be understood tbat be bad 
seen wbat be ougbt not to bave seen, tbat be bad just sur- 
prised tbe soûl of bis elder brotber in one of its most secret 
altitudes, and tbat Claude must not be allowed to know it. 
Seeing tbat tbe arcbdeacon bad fallen back into bis former 
immobility, be witbdrew bis bead very softly, and made some 
noise witb bis feet outside tbe door, like a person wbo bas 
just arrived and is giving warning of bis approacb. 

Enter ! ” cried tbe arcbdeacon, from tbe interior of bis 
cell; was expecting you. I left tbe door unlocked ex- 
pressly ; enter Master Jacques I ” 

Tbe scbolar entered boldly. Tbe arcbdeacon, wbo was very 
mucb embarrassed by sucb a visit in sucb a place, trembled 
in bis arm-cbair. Wbat ! ^tis you, Jeban ? 

’Tis a J, ail tbe same,’’ said tbe scbolar, witb bis ruddy, 
merry, and audacious face. 

Dom Claude’s visage bad resumed its severe expression. 

Wbat are you corne for ? 

Brotber,’^ replied tbe scbolar, making an effort to assume 
a decent, pitiful, and modest mien, and twirling bis cap in bis 
bands witb an innocent air ; I am corne to ask of you — 

“ Wbat ? 

A little lecture on morality, of wbicb I stand greatly in 
need,’’ J eban did not dare to add aloud, — and a little money 
of wbicb I arn in still greater need.^’ Tbis last member of 
bis phrase remained unuttered. 


^ANÂFKH. 


39 


Monsieur/’ said the arclideacon, in a cold tone, ‘^1 ain 
greatly displeased with you.” 

Alas ! ” sighed the scholar. 

Dom Claude inade his arm-chair describe a quarter circle, 
and gazed intently at Jehan. 

‘‘ I am very glad to see y ou.” 

This was a formidable exordium. Jehan braced himself 
for a rough encounter. 

Jehan, complaints are brought me about you every day. 
What affray was that in which you bruised with a cudgel a 
little vicomte, Albert de Kamonchamp ? ” 

^^Oh!” said Jehan, ‘‘a vast thing that ! A malicious page 
amused himself by splashing the scholars, by making his 
horse gallop through the mire ! ” 

Who,” pursued the archdeacon, is that Mahiet Fargel, 
whose gown you hâve torn? Tunicam dechîraverunt, saith 
the complaint.” 

Ah bah ! a wretched cap of a Montaigu ! Isn’t that it ? ” 

The complaint says tunicam and not cappettam. Do you 
know Latin ? ” 

Jehan did not reply. 

^^Yes,” pursued the priest shaking his head, ^^That is the 
State of learning and letters at the présent day. The Latin 
tongue is hardly understood, Syriac is unknown, Greek so 
odious that ’tis accounted no ignorance in the most learned to 
skip a Greek word without reading it, and to say , ^ Græcum 
est non legitur.^ ” 

The scholar raised his eyes boldly. Monsieur my brother, 
doth it please you that I shall explain in good French vernac- 
ular that Greek word which is written yonder on the wall ? ” 

What Word ? ” 

A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with 
their high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on 
the outside the secret commotions of a volcano. The student 
hardly noticed it. 

Well, Jehan,” stammered the elder brother with an effort, 
What is the meaning of yonder word ? ” 


40 


NOTBE-BAME. 


Fate.” 

Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued 
carelessly. 

‘‘And that word below it, graved by the same hand, 
'Jpàyt'eluy signifies ‘impurity/ You see that people do know 
their Greek.” 

And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson 
had rendered him thoughtful. 

Master Jehan, who possessed ail the artful ways of a spoiled 
child, judged that the moment was a favorable one in which 
to risk his request. Accordingly, he assumed an extremely 
soft tone and began, — 

“ My good brother, do you hâte me to such a degree as to 
look savagely upon me because of a few mischievous cuffs and 
blows distributed in a fair war to a pack of lads and brats, 
qidbusdam marmosetis ? You see, good Brother Claude, that 
people know their Latin.” 

But ail this caressing hypocrisy did not hâve its usual effect 
on the severe elder brother. Cerberus did not bite at the 
honey cake. The archdeacon’s brow did not lose a single 
wrinkle. 

“ What are you driving at ? ” he said dryly. 

“Well, in point of fact, this!” replied Jehan bravely, “I 
stand in need of money.” 

At this audacious déclaration, the archdeacon’s visage 
assumed a thoroughly pedagogical and paternal expression. 

“You know. Monsieur Jehan, that our fief of Tirechappe, 
putting the direct taxes and the rents of the nine and twenty 
houses in a block, yields only nine and thirty livres, eleven 
sous, six deniers, Parisian. It is one half more than in the 
time of the brothers Paclet, but it is not much.” 

“I need money,” said Jehan stoically. 

“You know that the official has decided that our twenty-one 
houses should be moved full into the fief of the Bishopric, 
and that we could redeem this homage only by paying the 
reverend bishop two marks of silver gilt of the price of six 
livres parisis. Now, these two marks I hâve not y et been 
able to get together. You know it/^ 


^ANÂFKH. 41 

know that I stand in need of inoney,” repeated Jehan 
for the third time. 

And what are you going to do with it ? 

This question caused a flash of hope togleam hefore Jehan’s 
eyes. He resumed his dainty, caressing air. 

“ Stay, dear Brother Claude, I should not corne to you, with 
any evil motive. There is no intention of cutting a dash in 
the taverns with your unzains, and of strutting about the 
streets of Paris in a caparison of gold brocade, with a lackey, 
cum meo laquasio. No, brother, ^tis for a good work.’^ 

What good Work ? demanded Claude, somewhat surprised. 

‘^Two of my friends wish to purchase an outfit for the 
infant of a poor Haudriette widow. It is a charity. It will 
cost three florins, and I should like to contribute to it.’’ 

“ What are names of your two friends ? ” 

Pierre l’Assommeur and Baptiste Croque-Oison.” * 

Hum,” said the archdeacon ; those are names as fit for 
a good work as a catapult for the chief altar.” 

It is certain that Jehan had made a very bad choice of 
names for his two friends. He realized it too late. 

And then,” pursued the sagacious Claude, what sort of 
an infant’s outfit is it that is to cost three florins, and that for 
the child of a Haudriette ? Since when hâve the Haudriette 
widows taken to having babes in swaddling-clothes ? ” 

Jehan broke the ice once more. 

Eh, well ! yes ! I need money in order to go and see 
Isabeau la Thierry e to-night ; in the Val-d’ Amour ! ” 

Impure wretch ! ” exclaimed the priest. 

'Avayvsia ! ” said Jehan. 

This quotation, which the scholar borrowed with malice, 
perchance, from the wall of the cell, produced a singular 
eflect on the archdeacon. He bit his lips and his wrath was 
drowned in a crimson flush. 

“ Begone,” he said to J ehan. I am expecting some one.” 

The scholar made one more effort. 

“ Brother Claude, give me at least one little parisis to buy 
something to eat.” 

* Peter the Slaugliterer ; and Baptist Crack-Gosling. 


42 


NOTRE-DAME. 


How far hâve you gone in the Décrétais of Gratian ? ” 
demanded Dom Claude. 

‘‘ I hâve lost my copy books. 

Where are you in your Latin humanities ? ’’ 

My copy of Horace has been stolen.’’ 

Where are you in Aristotle ? ” 

1’ faith ! brother what father of the church is it, who says 
that the errors of heretics hâve always had for their lurking 
place the thickets of Aristotle’s metaphysics ? A plague on 
Aristotle ! I care not to tear my religion on his meta- 
physics.” 

Young man,” resumed the archdeacon, ^^at the king’s last 
entry, there was a young gentleman, named Philippe de Com- 
ines, who wore embroidered on the housings of his horse this 
device, upon which I counsel you to meditate : Qui non lahorat, 
non manduceV^ 

The scholar remained silent for a moment, with his finger 
in his ear, his eyes on the ground, and a discomfited mien. 

Ail at once he turned round to Claude with the agile quick- 
ness of a wagtail. 

^'So, my good brother, you refuse me a sou parisis, where- 
with to buy a crust at a baker’s shop ?” 

Qui non lahorat, non manduceV^ 

At this response of the inflexible archdeacon. Jehan hid his 
head in his hands, like a woman sobbing, and exclaimed with 
an expression of despair: Otototoioioï.^’ 

“ What is the meaning of this, sir ? ” demanded Claude, 
surprised at this freak. 

What indeed ! ” said the scholar ; and he lifted to Claude 
his impudent eyes into which he had just thrust his fists in 
order to communicate to them the redness of tears ; “ ’tis 
Greek ! ’tis an anapæst of Æschylus which expresses grief 
perfectly.” 

And here he burst into a laugh so droll and violent that it 
made the archdeacon smile. It was Claude’s fault, in fact : 
why had he so spoiled that child ? 

“ Oh ! good Brother Claude,” resumed Jehan, emboldenedby 
this smile, look at my worn ont boots. Is there a cothurnus 


^ANÂFKH. 


43 

in thé world more tragic than these boots, wbose soles are 
lianging ont their tongues ? 

The archdeacon promptly returned to his original severity. 

“ I will send yon some new boots, but no money.’’ 

‘^Only a poor little parisis, brother,” continuëd the sup- 
pliant J ehan. I will learn Gratian by heart, I will believe 
firmly in God, I will be a regular Pythagoras of science and 
virtue. But one little parisis, in mercy ! Would yon hâve 
famine bite me with its jaws which are gaping in front of me, 
blacker, deeper, and more noisome than a Tartarus or the nose 
of a monk ? ’’ 

Dom Claude shook his wrinkled head : “ Qui non laborat — ’’ 

Jehan did not allow him to finish. 

^^Well,’^ he exclaimed, “to the devil then ! Long live joy ! I 
will live in the tavern, I will fight, I will break pots and I Avill 
go and see the wenches.’’ And thereupon, he hurled his cap at 
the Wall, and snapped his fingers like castanets. 

The archdeacon surveyed him with a gloomy air. 

“Jehan, you hâve no soûl.’’ 

“In that case, according to Epicurius, I lack a something 
made of another something which has no name.” 

“Jehan, you inust think seriously of amending your ways.” 

“ Oh, corne now,” cried the student, gazing in turn at his 
brother and the alembics on the furnace, “ everything is pre- 
posterous here, both ideas and bottles ! ” 

“Jehan, you are on a very slippery downward road. Do 
you know whither you are going ? ” 

“To the wine-shop,” said Jehan. 

“ The wine-shop leads to the pillory.” 

“ ’Tis as good a lantern as any other, and perchance with 
that one, Diogenes would hâve found his man.” 

“ The pillory leads to the gallows.” 

“ The gallows is a balance which has a man at one end and 
ther whole earth at the other. ’Tis fine to be the man.” . 

“ The gallows leads to hell.” 

“ ’Tis a big fire.” 

“Jehan, Jehan, the end will be bad.” 

“ The beginning will hâve been good.” 


44 


NOTBE-BAME. 


At that moment, the Sound of a footstep was lieard on the 
staircase. 

“ Silence ! said the arclideacon, laying his finger on his 
mouth, “liere is Master Jacques. Listen, Jehan/’ he added, 
in a low voice ; hâve a care never to speak of what you shall 
hâve seen or heard here. Hide yourself quickly under the 
furnace, and do not breathe.” 

The scholar concealed himself; just then a happy idea oc- 
curred to him. 

By the way, Brother Claude, a florin for not breathing.” 

Silence ! I promise.” 

You must give it to me.” 

Take it, then ! ” said the archdeacon angrily, flinging his 
purse at him. 

J ehan darted under the furnace again, and the door opened. 



.■Cû*:, 


f 



CHAPTEK V. 

THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK. 

The personage who entered wore a black gown and a gloomy 
mien. The first point which struck the eye of onr Jehan 
(who, as the reader will readily surmise, had ensconced him- 
self in his nook in such a manner as to enahle him to see 
and hear everything at his good pleasure) was the perfect sad- 
jiess of the garments and the visage of this new-comer. There 
was, nevertheless, some sweetness diffused over that face, but 
it was the sweetness of a cat or a judge, an affected, treaeher- 
ous sweetness. He was very gray and wrinkled, and not far 
from his sixtieth year, his eyes blinked, his eyebrows were 
white, hi§ lip pendulous, and his hands large. When Jehan 
saw that it was only this, that is to say, no doubt a physician 
or a magistrate, and that this man had a nose very far from 
his mouth, a sign of stupidity, he nestled down in his hole, 
in despair at being obliged to pass an indelinite time in such 
an uncomfortable attitude, and in such bad company. 

The archdeacon, in the meantime, had not even risen to re- 
çoive this personage. He had made the latter a sign to seat 
himself on a stool near the door, and, after several moments 
of a silence which appeared to be a continuation of a preceding 
méditation, he said to him in a rather patronizing way, 
‘^Good day. Master Jacques.’’ 

Greeting, master,” replied the man in black. 

45 


46 


NOTRE-DAME. 


There was in th.e two ways in which. Master J acques 
was pronounced on the one hand, and the master by pré- 
éminence on the other, the différence between monseigneur 
and monsieur, between domine and domne. It was evidently 
the meeting of a teacher and a disciple. 

‘‘Well!’’ resumed the archdeacon, after a fresh silence 
which Master Jacques took good care not to disturb, “how 
are you succeeding ? 

^^Alas! master/^ said the other, with a sad smile, ‘^1 am 
still seeking the stone. Plenty of ashes. But not a spark of 
gold.’^ 

Dom Claude made a gesture of impatience. am not 
talking to you of that. Master Jacques Charmolue, but of the 
trial of your magician. Is it not Marc Cenaine that you call 
him ? the butler of the Court of Accounts ? Does he con- 
fess his witchcraft ? Hâve you been successful with the 
torture ? 

^^Alas! no,’^ replied Master Jacques, still with his sad 
smile ; ^^we hâve not that consolation. That man is a stone ^ 
we might hâve him boiled in the Marché aux Pourceaux, before 
he would say anything. Nevertheless, we are sparing nothing^ 
for the sake of getting at the truth ; he is already thoroughly 
dislocated, we are applying ail the herbs of Saint John’s day ; 
as saith the old comedian Plautus, — 

‘ Advorsum stimulos, laminas, crucesque, compedesqite, 

Nervos, catenas, carceres, numellas, pedîcas, boias.' 

Nothing answers ; that man is terrible. I am at my wit’s end 
over him.’’ 

You hâve found nothing new in his house ? ” 

‘‘V faith, yes,” said Master Jacques, fumbling iii his pouch; 
“this parchment. There are words in it which we cannot 
comprehend. The criminal advocate. Monsieur Philippe 
Lheulier, nevertheless, knows a little Hebrew, which he 
learned in that matter of the Jews of the Pue Kantersten, at 
Brussels.” 

So saying. Master Jacques unrolled a parchment. Give it 
here,” said the archdeacon. And casting his eyes iipon this 


THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK. 


47 


writing: “Pure magic, Master Jacques!” he exclaimed. 
“ ‘ Emen-Hétan ! ’ ’Tis the cry of the vampires when they 
arrive at tlie witches’ sabbath. Fer ijjsum, et cum ipso, et in 
ipso! ^Tis the command which chains the devil in hell. 
Hax, pax, max ! that refers to medicine. A formula against 
the bite of mad dogs. Master Jacques ! y ou are procurator 
to the king in the Ecclesiastical Courts : this parchment is 
abominable.” 

“We will put the man to the torture once more. Here 
again,” added Master Jacques, fumbling afresh in his pouch, 
“ is something that Ave hâve found at Marc Cenaine’s house.” 

It was a vessel belonging to the same family as those which 
covered Dom Claude’s furnace. 

“ Ah ! ” said the archdeacon, “ a crucible for alchemy.” 

“I will confess to you,” continued Master Jacques, with his 
timid and awkward smile, “that I hâve tried it over the 
furnace, but I hâve succeeded no better than with my own.” 

The archdeacon began an examination of the vessel. 
“ What has he engraved on his crucible ? Och ! och ! the 
Word which expels fleas ! That Marc Cenaine is an ignora- 
mus ! I verily believe that you will never make gold with 
this ! ’Tis good to set in your bedroom in summer and that is 
ail ! ” 

“ Since we are talking about errors,” said the king’s procu- 
rator, “ I hâve just been studying the figures on the portai 
below before ascending hither; is your reverence quite sure 
that the opening of the work of physics is there port ray ed 
on the side toAvards the 'Hôtel-Dieu, and that among the seven 
nude figures which stand at the feet of Notre-Dame, that 
which has wings on his heels is Mercurius ? ” 

“Yes,” replied the priest ; “ Tis Augustin Nypho who 
writes it, that Italian doctor who had a bearded démon who 
acquainted him with ail things. However, we will descend, 
and I will explain it to you with the text before us.” 

“Thanks, master,” said Charmolue, boAving to the earth. 
“ By the way, I was on the point of forgetting. When doth 
it please you that I shall apprehend the little sorceress ? ” 

“ What sorceress ? ” 


48 


NOTRE-DAME. 


ïhat gypsy girl you know, who cornes every day to dance 
on the church square, in spite of the ofïiciars prohibition ! 
She hath a demoniac goat with horns of the devil, which 
reads, which writes, which knows mathematics like Picatrix, 
and which would suffice to hang ail Bohemia. The prosecu- 
tion is ail ready ; Twill soon be finished, I assure you ! A 
pretty créature, on my soûl, that dancer ! The handsomest 
black eyes ! Two Egyptian carbuncles ! When shall we 
begin ? 

The archdeacon was excessively pale. 

“I will tell you that hereafter,” he stammered, in a voice 
that was barely articulate ; then he resumed with an effort, 
Busy yourself with Marc Cenaine.” 

Be at ease,” said Charmolue with a smile ; l’il buckle 
him down again for you on the leather bed when I get home. 
But ’tis a de vil of a man ; he wearies even Pierrat Torterue 
himself, who hath hands larger than my own. As that good 
Plautus saith, — 

‘Nudus vinctus, centum pondo, es quando pendes per pedes.’ 

The torture of the wheel and axle ! ’Tis the most effectuai ! 
He shall taste it ! ’’ 

Dom Claude seemed absorbed in gloomy abstraction. He 
turned to Charmolue, — 

Master Pierrat — Master Jacques, I mean, busy yourself 
with Marc Cenaine.’^ 

^‘Yes, y es, Dom Claude. Poor man ! he will hâve suffered 
like Mummol. What an idea to go 'to the witches’ sabbath ! 
a butler of the Court of Accounts, who ought to know Charle- 
magne’s text ; Stryga vel masca ! — In the matter of the little 
girl, — Smelarda, as they call her, — I will await your orders. 
Ah ! as we pass through the portai, you will explain to me 
also the meaning of the gardener painted in relief, which one 
sees as one enters the church. Is it not the Sower ? Hé I 
master, of what are you thinking, pray ? 

Dom Claude, buried in lus own thoughts, no longer listened 
to him. Charmolue, folio wing the direction of his glance, 
perceived that it was fixed mechanically on the great spider’s 


THE TWO ME N CLOTHED IN BLACK. 


49 


web whicb draped the window. At that moment, a bewil- 
dered fly whicb was seeking the Mardi sun, flung itself 
through the net and became entangled there. On the agita- 
tion of his web, the enormous spider made an abrupt move 
from his central cell, then with one bound, rushed upon the 
fly, which he folded together with his fore antennæ, while his 
hideous proboscis dug into the victim’s head. “ Poor fly ! ” 
said the king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court ; and he 
raised his hand to save it. The archdeacon, as though roused 
with a start, withheld his arm with convulsive violence. 

^‘Master Jacques,” he cried, “let fate take its course!” 

The procurator wheeled round in affright ; it seemed to 
him that pincers of iron had clutched his arm. The priest’s 
eye was staring, wild, flaming, and remained riveted on the 
horrible little group of the spider and the fly. 

Oh, yes ! ” continued the priest, in a voice which seemed 
to proceed from the depths of his being, ^‘behold here a 
Symbol of ail. She Aies, she is j oyons, she is just born ; she 
seeks the spring, the open air, liberty : oh, yes ! but let her 
corne in contact with the fatal network, and the spider issues 
from it, the hideous spider ! Poor dancer ! poor, predestined 
fl}"! Let things take their course. Master Jacques, ’tis fate! 
Alas ! Claude, thou art the spider ! Claude, thou art the fly 
also ! Thou wert flying towards learning, light, the sun. 
Thou hadst no other care than to reach the open air, the full 
daylight of eternal truth; but in precipitating thyself to- 
wards the dazzling window which opens upon the other world, 
— upon the world of brightness, intelligence, and science — 
blind fly! senseless, learned man ! thou hast not perceived 
that subtle spider’s web, stretched by destiny betwixt the 
light and thee — thou hast flung thyself headlong into it, and 
now thou art struggling with head broken and mangled wings 
between the iron antennæ of fate ! Master Jacques ! Master 
Jacques ! let the spider work its will ! ” 

“1 assure you,” said Charmolue, who was gazing at him 
without comprehending him, “ that I will not touch it. But 
release my arm, master, for pity’s sake ! You hâve a hand 
like a pair of pincers 


50 


NOTBE-BAME. 


The archdeacon did not hear him. Oh, madman ! ” he 
went on, without removing his gaze from the window. And 
even couldst thon hâve broken through that formidable web, 
with thy gnat’s wings, thon believest that thon couldst hâve 
reached the light ? Alas ! that pane of glass which is further 
on, that transparent obstacle, that wall of crystal, harder than 
brass, which séparâtes ail philosophies from the truth, how 
wouldst thon hâve overcome it ? Oh, vanity of science ! how 
many wise men corne flying from afar, to dash their heads 
against thee ! How many Systems vainly fling themselves 
buzzing against that eternal pane ! ’’ 

He became silent. These last ideas, which had gradually 
led him back from himself to science, appeared to hâve calmed 
him. Jacques Charmolue recalled him wholly to a sense of 
reality by addressing to him tins question : Corne, now, mas- 
ter, when will you corne to aid me in making gold ? I am 
impatient to succeed.’^ 

The archdeacon shook his head, with a bitter smile. Master 
Jacques read Michel Psellus’ ^Dialogus de Energia et Oj)eratione 
DœmonumJ What we are doing is not wholly innocent.’’ 

“ Speak lower, master ! I hâve my suspicions of it,” said 
Jacques Charmolue. But one must practise a bit of her- 
metic science when one is only procurator of the king in the 
ecclesiastical court, at thirty crowns tournois a year. Only 
speak low.” 

At that moment the sound of jaws in the act of mastica- 
tion, which proceeded from beneath the furnace, struck 
Charmolue’s uneasy ear. 

“ What’s that ? ” he inquired. 

It was the scholar, who, ill at ease, and greatly bored in his 
hiding-place, had succeeded in discovering there a stale crust 
and a triangle of mouldy cheese, and had set to devouring the 
whole without ceremony, by way of consolation and break- 
fast. As he was very hungry, he made a great deal of noise, 
and he accented each mouthful strongly, which startled and 
alarmed the procurator. 

“ ’Tis a cat of mine,” said the archdeacon, quickly, who is 
regaling herself under there with a mouse.” 


THE TWO MEN CLOTHED IN BLACK. 


51 


This explanation satisfied Charmolue. 

In fact, master,” he replied, with a respectful smile, ail 
great philosophers hâve their familiar animal. You know 
what Servius saith : ^ Nullus enim locus sine genio est, — for 
there is no place that hath not its spirit.’ ” 

But Dom Claude, who stood in terror of some new freak on 
tlie part of Jehan, reminded his worthy disciple that they had 
some figures on the façade to study together, and the two 
quitted the cell, to the accompaniment of a great ouf ! ” from 
the scholar, who began to seriously fear that his knee would 
acquire the imprint of his chin. 




CHAPTER VI. 

THE EFFECT WHICH SEVEN OATHS IN THE OPEN AIR CAN 
PRODUCE. 

Te Deum laudamus ! ’’ exclaimed Master Jehan, creep- 
ing ont from his hole, “ the screech-owls hâve departed. Och ! 
och ! Hax ! pax ! max ! fleas ! mad dogs ! the devil ! I hâve 
had enough of their conversation ! My head is humming like 
a bell tower. And mouldy cheese to boot ! Corne on ! Let us 
descend, take the big brother’s purse and convert ail these 
coins into bottles ! ” 

He cast a glance of tenderness and admiration into the 
interior of the precious pouch, readjusted his toilet, rubbed 
up his boots, dusted his poor half sleeves, ail gray with ashes, 
whistled an air, indulged in a sportive pirouette, looked about 
to see whether there were not soinething more in the cell to 
take, gathered up here and there on the furnace some amulet 
in glass which might serve to bestow, in the guise of a trinket, 
on Isabeau la Thierrye, finally pushed open the door which his 
brother had left unfastened, as a last indulgence, and which 
he, in his turn, left open as a last piece of malice, and de- 
scended the circular staircase, skipping like a bird. 

In the midst of the gloom of the spiral staircase, he elbowed 
something which drew aside with a growl; he took it for 
granted that it was Quasimodo, and it struck him as so droll 
that he descended the remainder of the staircase holding his 
sides with laughter. On emerging upon the Place, he laughed 
yet more heartily. 

He stamped his foot when he found himself on the ground 
once again. “ Qh ! ” said he, good and honorable pavement 

52 


THE EFFECT OF 8EVEN OATHS. 


53 

of Paris, cursed staircase, fit to put the angels of Jacob’s 
ladder out of breath ! What was I thinkiug of to thrust 
inyself into that stone gimlet which pierces the sky ; ail for 
the sake of eating bearded cheese, and looking at the bell- 
towers of Paris through a hole in the wall ! 

He advanced a few paces, and caught sight of the t#o 
screech owls, that is to say, Dom Claude and Master Jacques 
Charmolue, absorbed in contemplation before a carving on the 
façade. He approached thein on tiptoe, and heard the arch- 
deacon say in a low tone to Charmolue: ‘^’Twas Guillaume 
de Paris who caused a Job to be carved upon this stone of the 
hue of lapis-lazuli, gilded on the edges. Job represents the 
philosopheras stone, which must also be tried and martyrized 
in order to become perfect, as saith Eaymond Lulle : Suh con- 
servatione formæ specificæ salva animaP 

‘‘That makes no différence to me,^’ said Jehan, “Tis I who 
hâve the purse.’’ 

At that moment he heard a powerful and sonorous voice 
articulate behind him a formidable sériés of oaths. “ Sang 
Dieu ! Ventre-Dieu ! Bédieu ! Corps de Dieu ! Nombril de 
Belzéhuth ! Nom dhin pape ! Corne et tonnerreP 

“ Upon my soûl ! ’’ exclaimed Jehan, “ that can only be my 
friend, Captain Phœbus ! ’’ 

This name of Phœbus reached the ears of the archdeacon at 
the moment when he was explaining to the king’s procurator 
the dragon which is hiding its tail in a bath, from which issue 
smoke and the head of a king. Dom Claude started, inter- 
rupted him self and, to the great amazement of Charmolue^ 
turned round and beheld his brother Jehan accosting a tall offi- 
cer at the door of the Gondelaurier mansion. 

It was, in fact, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers. He was 
backed up against a corner of the house of his betrothed and 
swearing like a heathen. 

“ By my faith ! Captain Phœbus,’’ said Jehan, taking him 
by the hand, “ y ou are cursing with admirable vigor.” 

“ Horns and thunder ! ” replie d the captain. 

“ Horns and thunder yourself ! ” replied the student. “ Corne 
now, fair captain, whence cornes this overflow of fine words ? ” 


54 


NOTRE-DAME, 


Pardon me, good comrade Jehan, exclaimed Phœbus, 
shaking his hand, ‘^a horse going at a gallop cannot hait 
short. Now, I was swearing at a hard gallop. I hâve just 
been with those prudes, and when I corne forth, I always find 
my throat full of ourses, I must spit them ont or strangle, 
ventre et tonnerre ! ” 

Will y ou corne and drink ? asked the scholar. 

This proposition calmed the captain. 
l’m willing, but I hâve no money.’^ 

But I hâve ! ” 

Bah ! let’s see it ! ” 

Jehan spread out the purse before the captain’s eyes, with 
dignity and simplicity. Meanwhile, the archdeacon, who had 
abandoned the dumbfounded Charmolue where he stood, had 
approached them and halted a few paces distant, watching 
them without their noticing him, so deeply were they absorbed 
in contemplation of the purse. 

Phœbus exclaimed: “A purse in your pocket. Jehan! 
’tis the moon in a bucket of water, one sees it there but ’tis 
not there. There is nothing but its shadow. Pardieu ! let us 
wager that these are pebbles ! 

Jehan replied coldly : Here are the pebbles wherewith 
I pave my fob ! ’’ 

And without adding another word, he emptied the purse on a 
neighboring post, with the air of a Eoman saving his country. 

True God ! muttered Phœbus, targes, big-blanks, little 
blanks, mailles, * every two worth one of Tournay, farthings 
of Paris, real eagle liards ! ^Tis dazzling ! 

Jehan remained dignified and immovable. Several liards 
had rolled into the mud; the captain in his enthusiasm 
stooped to pick them up. Jehan restrained him. 

Pye, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers ! ’’ 

Phœbus counted the coins, and turning towards Jehan with 
solemnity, ^^Do y ou know. Jehan, that there are three and 
twenty sous parisis ! whom hâve you plundered to-night, in 
the Street Cut-Weazand ? ” 

* An ancient copper coin, the forty-fourth part of a sou or the twelfth 
part of a farthing. 


THE EFFECT OF SEVEN OATHS. 55 

J ehan flung back bis blonde and curly head, and said, balf- 
closing bis eyes disdainfully, — 

• “ We bave a brotber wbo is an arcbdeacon and a fool.” 

Corîie de Dieu ! ” exclaimed Pbœbus/’ tbe wortby man ! 

‘^Let us go and drink/’ said Jeban. 

“ Where shall we go ? ’’ said Pbœbus ; ‘ To Eve’s Apple/ 

^‘Noj captain, to ^ Ancient Science/ An old woman sawing 
a basket handle ; * ’tis a rebus, and I like tbat/’ 

“A plague on rebuses, Jeban ! tbe wine is better at ^Eve^s 
Apple ’ ; and tben, beside tbe door tbere is a vine in tbe sun 
wbicb cbeers me wbile I am drinking.” 

Well ! here goes for Eve and ber apple,’’ said tbe student, 
and taking Phœbus’s arm. ^^By tbe way, my dear captain, 
y ou just mentioned tbe Eue Coupe-Gueule, t Tbat is a very 
bad form of speecb ; people are no longer so barbarous. Tbey 
say, Coupe-Gorge.” t 

Tbe two friends set out towards Eve’s Apple.” It is un- 
necessary to mention tbat tbey bad first gatbered up tbe 
money, and tbat tbe arcbdeacon followed tbem. 

Tbe arcbdeacon followed tbem, gloomy and baggard. Was 
tbis tbe Pbœbus wbose accursed name bad been mingled witb 
ail bis tbougbts ever since bis interview witb Gringoire ? He 
did not know it, but it was at least a Pbœbus, and tbat magic 
name sulbced to make tbe arcbdeacon follow tbe two beedless 
comrades witb tbe stealtby tread of a wolf, listening to tbeir 
words and observing tbeir sligbtest gestures witb anxious 
attention. Moreover, notbing was easier tban to bear ever}'^- 
tbing tbey said, as tbey talked loudly, not in tbe least con- 
cerned tbat tbe passers-by were taken into tbeir confidence. 
Tbey talked of duels, wenches, wine pots, and folly. 

At tbe turning of a Street, tbe sound of a tambourine 
reacbed tbem from a neigbboring square. Dom Claude beard 
tbe officer say to tbe scbolar, — 

“ Tbunder ! Let us basten our steps ! ” 

Wby, Pbœbus ? ” 

“ l’m afraid lest tbe Bobemian sbould see me.” 

*Une vielle qui scie une anse. t Cut-Weazand Street, 
î Cut-Throat Street. 


56 


NOTEE-BAME, 


“ What Bohemian ? ’’ 

The little girl with the goat.” 

“ La Smeralda ? ” 

That’s it, Jehan. I always forget her devil of a name. 
Let us make haste, she will recognize me. I don’t want to 
hâve that girl accost me in the Street.’^ 

“ Do you know her, Phœbus ? 

Here the archdeacon saw Phœbus sneer, bend down to 
Jehan’s ear, and say a few words to him in a low voice.; then 
Phœbus biirst into a laugh, and shook his head with a trium- 
phant air. 

Truly ? said Jehan. 

Upon my soûl ! said Phœbus. 

This evening ? 

‘‘Tins evening.’’ 

“ Are you sure that she will corne ? ” 

“ Are you a fool, Jehan ? Does one doubt such things ? ” 

“ Captain Phœbus, you are a happy gendarme ! ” 

The archdeacon heard the whole of this conversation. His 
teeth chattered ; a visible shiver ran through his whole body. 
He halted for a moment, leaned against a post like a drunken 
man, then followed the two merry knaves. 

At the moment when he overtook them once more, they 
had changed their conversation. He heard them singing at 
the top of their lungs the ancient refrain, — 

Les enfants des Petits-Carreaux 
Se font pendre comme des veaux. * 

* The children of the Petits Carreaux let themselves he hung like calves. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

THE MYSTERIOUS MONK. 

The illustrious wine shop of Eve’s Apple ’’ was situated in 
the University, at the corner of the Rue de la Rondelle and 
the Rue de la Bâtonnier. It was a very spacious and very 
low hall on the ground fioor, with a vaulted ceiling whose cen- 
tral spring rested upon a huge pillar of wood painted yellow ; 
tables everywhere, shining pewter jugs hanging on the walls, 
always a large number of drinkers, a plenty of wenches, a 
window on the Street, a vine at the door, and over the door 
a flaring piece of sheet-iron, painted with an apple and a 
woman, rusted by the rain and turning with the wind on an 
iron pin. This species of weather-vane which looked upon 
the pavement was the signboard. 

Night was falling ; the square was dark ; the wine-shop, 
full of candies, flamed afar like a forge in the gloom; the 
noise of glasses and feasting, of oaths and quarrels, which es- 
caped through the broken panes, was audible. Through* the 
mist which the warmth of the room spread over the window 
in front, a hundred confused figures could be seen swarming, 
and from time to time a burst of noisy laughter broke forth 
from it. The passers-by who were going about their business, 
slipped past this tumul tuons window without glancing at it. 
Only at intervals did some little ragged boy raise himself 
on tiptoe as far as the ledge, and hurl into the drinking-shop, 
that ancient, jeering hoot, with which drunken men were then 
pursued : Aux Houls, saouls, saouls, saouls ! 

NeverthelesS; one man paced imperturbably back and forth 

57 


58 


NOTBE-BAMK. 


in front of the tavern, gazing at it incessantly, and going no 
further from it than a pikeman froin his sentiy-box. He was 
enveloped in a mantle to his very nose. This inantle he had 
jiist.purchased of the old-clothes man, in the vicinity of the 
Eve’s Apple/’ no doubt to protect himself from the cold of 
the March evening, possibly also, to conceal his costume. 
Erom time to time he paused in front of the dim window with 
its leaden lattice, listened, looked, and stamped his foot. 

At length the door of the dram-shop opened. This was 
what he appeared to be waiting for. Two boon companions 
came forth. The ray of light which escaped from the door 
crimsoned for a moment their jovial faces. 

The man in the mantle went and stationed himself on the 
watch under a porch on the other side of the Street. 

“ Corne et tonnerre ! ” said one of the comrades. Seven 
o’clock is on the point of striking. ’Tis the hour of my ap- 
pointed meeting.” 

I tell you/’ repeated his companion, with a thick tongue, 
that I don’t live in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles, indignus 
qui inter mala verha habitat. I hâve a lodging in the Rue 
Jean-Pain-Mollet, in vico Jolia^inis Pain-Mollet. You are 
more horned than a unicorn if you assert the contrary. 
Every one knows that he who once mounts astride a bear is 
never after afraid ; but you hâve a nose turned to dainties like 
Saint-Jacques of the hospital.” 

Jehan, my friend, you are drunk,” said the other. 

The other replied staggering, ^‘It pleases you to say so, 
Phœbus ; but it hath been proved that Plato had the profile 
of a hound.” 

The reader has, no doubt, already recognized our two brave 
friends, the captain and the scholar. Tt appears that the mn’ 
who was lying in wait for them had also recognized them, f( 
he slowly followed ail the zigzags that the scholar caused tli 
captain to make, who being a more hardened drinker hnd 
retained ail his self-possession. By listening to them attei - 
tively, the man in the mantle could catch in its entirety the 
following interesting conversation, — 

Corbacque ! Eo try to walk straight, master bachelor ; 


THE MYSTEBIOUS MON K. 59 

you know that I must leave yoii. Here it is seven o’clock. 
I hâve an appointment with a woman.’^ 

“ Leave me then ! I see stars and lances of lire. You are like 
the Chatean de Dampmartin, which is bursting with laughter/’ 

‘‘By the warts of my grandmother, Jehan, you are raving 
with too much rabidness. By the way, Jehan, hâve you any 
money left ? 

“ Monsieur Rector, there is no mistake ; the little butcher’s 
shop, parva houcheriaN 

“Jehan ! my friend Jehan ! You know that I made an ap- 
pointment with that little girl at the end of the Pont Saint- 
Michel, and I can only take her to the Falourdehs, the old 
crone of the bridge, and that I must pay for a chamber. The 
old witch with a white moustache would not trust me. Je- 
han ! for pity’s sake ! Hâve we drunk up the whole of the 
curé’s purse ? Hâve you not a single parisis left ? 

“ The consciousness of having spent the other hours well is 
a just and savory condiment for the table.^’ 

“ Belly and guts ! a truce to your whimsical nonsense ! Tell 
me. Jehan of the devil ! hâve you any money left ? Give 
it to me, hédieii ! ’’ or I will search you, were you as leprous as 
Job, and as scabby as Cæsar ! ’’ 

“ Monsieur, the Rue Galiache is a Street which hath at one 
end the Rue de la Verrerie, and at the other the Rue de la 
Tixeranderie.’’ 

“ Well, y es ! my good friend Jehan, my poor comrade, the 
Rue Galiache is good, very good. But in the name of heaven 
collect your wits. I must hâve a sou parisis, and the appoint- 
ment is for seven o’clock.’^ 

“ Silence for the rondo, and attention to the refrain, — 

“ Quand les rats mangeront les cas, 

Le roi sera seigneur d’Arras; 

Quand la mer, qui est grande et lée 
Sera à la Saint- Jean gelée. 

On verra, par-dessus la glace. 

Sortir ceux d’ Arras de leur place. ” * 

* When the rats eat the cats, the king will be lord of Arras ; when the 
sea which is great and wide, is frozen over at St. John’ s tide, men will 
see across the ice, those who dwell in Arras quit their place. 


60 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ Well, scholar of Antichrist, may y ou be strangled with the 
entrails of your mother ! ” exclaimed Phœbus, and he gave 
the drunken scholar a rough push ; the latter slipped against 
the wall, and slid flabbily to the pavement of Philip Au- 
gustus. A remuant of fraternal pity, which never abandons 
the heart of a drinker, prompted Phœbus to roll Jehan with 
his foot upon one of those pillows of the poor, which Provi- 
dence keeps in readiness at the corner of ail the Street posts 
of Paris, and which the rich blight with the name of a rub- 
bish-heap.’’ The captain adjusted Jehan’s head upon an in- 
clined plane of cabbage-stumps, and on the very instant, the 
scholar fell to snoring in a magnificent bass. Meanwhile, ail 
malice was not extinguished in the captain’s heart. “ So much 
the worse if the devil’s cart picks you up on its passage ! ” he 
said to the poor, sleeping clerk ; and he strode off. 

The man in the mantle, who had not ceased to follow him, 
halted for a moment before the prostrate scholar, as though 
agitated by indécision; then, uttering a profound sigh, he 
also strode off in pursuit of the captain. 

We, like them, will leave Jehan to slumber beneath the 
open sky, and will follow them also, if it pleases the reader. 

On emerging into the Pue Saint-André-des-Arcs, Captain 
Phœbus perceived that some one was following him. On 
glancing sideways by chance, he perceived a sort of shadow 
crawling after him along the walls. He halted, it halted ; he 
resumed his march, it resumed its march. This disturbed 
him not overmuch. Ah, bah ! he said to himself, “ I bave 
not a sou.” 

He paused in front of the College d’Autun. It was at this 
college that he had sketched out what he called his studies, 
and, through a scholar’s teasing habit which still lingered in 
him, he never passed the façade without inflicting on the 
statue of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand, sculptured to the right of 
the portai, the affront of which Priapus complains so bitterly 
in the satire of Horace, Olim truncus eram ficulnus. He had 
doue this with so much unrelenting animosity that the in- 
scription, Eduensis episcopus, had become almost effaced. 
Therefore, he halted before the statue according to his wont. 


THE MYSTERIOUS MON K. 


61 


The Street was utterly deserted. At the moment when he 
was coolly retying his shoulder knots, with his nose in the 
air, he saw the shadow approaching him with slow steps, so 
slow that he had ample time to observe that this shadow wore 
a cloak and a hat. On arriving near him, it halted and re- 
mained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand. 
Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phœbus two intent eyes, fiill of 
that vague light which issues in the night time from the pupils 
of a cat. 

The captain was brave, and would hâve cared very little for 
a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand. But this walking 
statue, this petrified man, froze his blood. There were then 
in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal - 
prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confus- 
edly to his memory. He remained for several minutes in 
stupéfaction, and finally broke the silence with a forced laugh. 

Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you pro- 
duce upon me the effect of a héron attacking a nutshell. I 
am the son of a ruined family, my dear fellow. Try your 
hand near by here. In the chapel of this college there is 
some wood of the true cross set in silver.’^ 

The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle 
and descended upon the arm of Phœbus with the gripe of an 
eagle’s talon ; at the same time the shadow spoke, — 

Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers ! ” 

“ What, the devil ! ” said Phœbus, ‘^you know my name ! ’’ 

‘‘ I know not your name alone,’’ continued the man in the 
mantle, with his sepulchral voice. ^^You hâve a rendezvous 
this evening.’’ 

“ Yes,” replied Phœbus in amazement. 

At seven o’clock.” 

“ In a quarter of an hour.’^ 

At la FalourdePs.’’ 

“ Precisely.’’ 

“ The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.^^ 

Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.’’ 

“ Impious wretch ! ” muttered the spectre. “ With a 
woman ? ” 


62 


NOTRE-DAME. 


ConfiteoVj — I confess — 

Who is called — ? 

La Smeralda/’ said Phœbus, gayly. Ail bis heedlessness 
had gradually returned. 

At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phœbus 
in a fiiry. 

Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers, thou liest ! ’’ 

Any one who could hâve beheld at that moment the cap- 
tain’s inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent 
that he disengaged himself from the grip which held him, 
the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his sword- 
hilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility 
of the man in the cloak, — any one who could hâve beheld 
this would hâve been frightened. There was in it a touch of 
the combat of Don J uan and the statue. 

“ Christ and Satan ! ’’ exclaimed the captain. That is a 
Word which rarely strikes the ear of a Châteaupers ! Thou 
wilt not dare repeat it.” 

“ Thou liest ! ” said the shadow coldly. 

The captain gnashed his teeth. Surly monk, phantom, 
superstitions, — he had forgotten ail at that moment. He no 
longer beheld anything but a man, and an insult. 

Ah ! this is well ! ” he stammered, in a voice stifled with 
rage. He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well 
as fear makes a man tremble : — Here ! On the spot ! Corne 
011 ! Swords ! Swords ! Blood on the pavement ! ” 

But the other never stirred. When he beheld his adversary 
on guard and ready to parry, — 

^‘Captain Phœbus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with 
bitterness, you forget your appointment.” 

The rages of men like Phœbus are milk-soups, whose ébul- 
lition is calmed by a drop of cold water. This simple remark 
caused the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be 
lowered. 

Captain,” pursued the man, to-morrow, the day after 
to-morrow, a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me 
ready to eut your throat ; but go first to your rendez vous.” 

In sooth,” said Phœbus, as though seeking to capitulate 


THE MYSTERIOUS MONK. 


6e 


with. himself, these are two charming things to be encount- 
ered in a rendezvous, — a sword and a wench ; but I do not 
see why I should miss the one for the sake of the other, when 
I can bave botb.’’ 

He replaced bis sword in its scabbard. 

Go to your rendezvous/’ said tbe man. 

‘^Monsieur/’ replied Pbœbus witb soine embarrassment, 
^^many tbanks for your courtesy. In fact, there will be 
ample time to-morrow for us to cbop up father Adam’s doub- 
let into slashes and buttonholes. I am obliged to you for 
allowing me to pass one more agreeable quarter of an hour. I 
certainly did bope to put you in tbe gutter, and still arrive 
in time for tbe fair one, especially as it bas a better appear- 
ance to make tbe women wait a little in sucb cases. But you 
strike me as baving tbe air of a gallant man, and it is safer to 
defer our affair until to-morrow. So I will betake myself to 
my rendezvous ; it is for seven o’clock, as you know.” Here 
Pbœbus scratcbed bis ear. Ab . Corne Dieu ! I bad for- 
gotten ! I baven’t a sou to discbarge tbe price of tbe garret, 
and tbe old crone will insist on being paid in advance. Sbe 
distrusts me.” 

“ Here is tbe wberewitbal to pay.” 

Pbœbus felt tbe stranger’s cold band slip into bis a large 
piece of money. He could not refrain from taking the money 
and pressing tbe band. 

Vrai Dieu ! ” he exclaimed, '' you are a good fellow ! ” 

One condition,” said tbe man. Prove to me that I bave 
been wrong and that you were speaking the trutb. Hide me 
in some corner whence I can see wbetber this woman is really 
the one wbose naine you uttered.” 

Oh ! ” replied Pbœbus, ^^’tis ail one to me. We will take 
tbe Sainte-Marthe cbamberj you can look at your ease from 
the kennel hard by.” 

Corne tben,” said tbe sbadow.” 

At your service,” said the captain, I know not wbetber 
you are Messer Hiavolus in person 5 but let us be good friends 
for this evening ; to-morrow I will repay you ail my debts, 
botb of purse and sword.” 


64 


NOTRE-DAME. 


They set ont again at a rapid pace. At the expiration of a 
few minutes, the sound of the river announced to them that 
they were on the Pont Saint-Michel, then loaded with houses. 

I will first show you the way,” said Phœbus to his com- 
panion, “ I will then go in search of the fair one who is await- 
ing me near the Petit-Châtelet.” 

His companion made no reply ; he had not uttered a word 
since they had been walking side by side. Phœbus halted 
before a low door, and knocked roughly ; a light made its 
appearance through the cracks of the door. 

“ Who is there ? ” cried a toothless voice. 

Corps-Dieu ! Tête-Dieu ! Ventre-Dieu ! ” replied the cap- 
tain. 

The door opened instantly, and allowed the new-comers to 
see an old woman and an old lamp, both of which trembled. 
The old woman was bent double, clad in tatters. with a shak- 
iiig head, pierced with two small eyes, and coiffed with a dish 
dont ; wrinkled everywhere, on hands and face and neck ; her 
lips retreatêd under her gums, and about her mouth she had 
tufts of white hairs which gave her the whiskered look of a cat. 

The interior of the den was no less dilapitated than she ; 
there were chalk walls, blackened beams in the ceiling, a dis- 
mantled chimney-piece, spiders’ webs in ail the corners, in 
the middle a staggering herd of tables and lame stools, a dirty 
child arnong the ashes, and at the back a staircase, or rather, 
a wooden ladder, which ended in a trap door in the ceiling. 

On entering this lair, Phœbus’s mysterious companion raised 
his mantle to his very eyes. Meanwhile, the captain, swear- 
ing like a Saracen, hastened to ^^make the sun shine in a 
Crown ” as saith our admirable Eégnier. 

The Sainte-Marthe chamber,” said he. 

The old woman addressed him as monseigneur, and shut up 
the Crown in a drawer. It was the coin which the man in the 
black mantle had given to Phœbus. While her back was 
turned, the bushy-headed and ragged little boy who was play- 
ing in the ashes, adroitly approached the drawer, abstracted 
the Crown, and put in its place a dry leaf which he had plucked 
from a fagot. 


THE MYSTERIOUS MONK. 


65 


The old crone made a sign to the two gentlemen, as she 
called them, to follow her, and monnted the ladder in advance 
of them. On arriving at the upper story, she set her lamp on 
a coffer, and, Phœhus, like a frequent visitor of the house, 
opened a door which opened on a dark hole. Enter here, 
my dear fellow,’’ he said to his companion. The man in the 
mantle obeyed without a word in reply, the door closed upon 
him ; he heard Phœbns boit it, and a moment later descend 
the stairs again with the aged hag. The light had disap- 
peared. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE UTILITY OF WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE RIVER. 

Claude Erollo (for we présumé that the reader, more intel- 
ligent than Phœbus, has seen in this whole adventure no other 
surly monk than the archdeacon), Claude Erollo groped about 
for several moments in the dark lair into which the captain 
had bolted him. It was one of those nooks which architects 
sometimes reserve at the point of junction between the roof 
and the supporting wall. A vertical section of this kennel, as 
Phœbus had so justly styled it, would hâve made a triangle. 
Moreover, there was neither window nor air-hole, and the slope 
of the roof prevented one from standing upright. Accord- 
ingly, Claude crouched down in the dust, and the plaster 
which cracked beneath him ; his head was on lire ; rummaging 
around him with his hands, he found on the floor a bit of 
broken glass, which he pressed to his brow, and whose cool- 
ness afforded him some relief. 

What was taking place at that moment in the gloomy soûl 
of the archdeacon ? God and himself could alone know. 

In what order was he arranging in his mind la Esmeralda, 
Phœbus, Jacques Charmolue, his young brother sobeloved, y et 
abandoned by him in the mire, his archdeacon’s cassock, his 
réputation perhaps dragged to la Ealourdel’s, ail these adven- 
tures, ail these images ? I cannot say. But it is certain that 
these ideas formed in his mind a horrible group. 

He had been waiting a quarter of an hour ; it seemed to 
him that he had grown a century older. Ail at once he heard 

66 


WINDOWS WmCH OP EN ON THE BIVER. 67 


the creaking of the boards of the stairway; some one was 
ascending. The trapdoor opened once more ; a light re- 
appeared. There was a tolerably large crack in the worm- 
eaten door of his den ; he put his face to it. In this manner 
he could see ail that went on in the adjoining room. The 
cat-faced old crone was the first to emerge froin the trap-door, 
lamp in hand ; then Phœbus, twirling his moustache, then a 
third person, that beautiful and graceful figure, la Esmeralda. 
The priest beheld her rise from below like a dazzling appa- 
rition. Claude trembled, a cloud spread over his eyes, his 
puises beat violently, everything rustled and whirled around 
him ; he no longer saw nor heard anything. 

When he recovered himself, Phœbus and Esmeralda were 
alone seated on the wooden coffer beside the lamp which 
made these two youthful figures and a misérable pallet at 
the end of the attic stand ont plainly before the archdeacon’s 
eyes. 

Beside the pallet was a window, whose panes broken like a 
spider’s web upon which rain has f allen, allowed a view, through 
its rent meshes, of a corner of the sky, and the moon lying 
far away on an eiderdown bed of soft clouds. 

The young girl was blushing, confused, palpitating. Her 
long, drooping lashes shaded her crimson cheeks. The officer, 
to whom she dared not lift her eyes, was radiant. Mechani- 
cally, and with a charmingly unconscious gesture, she traced 
with the tip of her finger incohérent lines on the bench, and 
watched her finger. Her foot was not visible. The little 
goat was nestling upon it. 

The captain was very gallantly clad ; he had tufts of em- 
broidery at his neck and wrists ; a great elegance at that day. 

It was not without difîiculty that Dom Claude managed to 
hear what they were saying, through the humming of the 
blood, which was boiling in his temples. 

(A conversation between lovers is a very commonplace 
affair. It is a perpétuai ^^I love you.” A musical phrase 
which is very insipid and very bald for indifferent listeners, 
when it is not ornamented with some fioriture ; but Claude 
was not an indifferent listener.) 


68 


NOTRE-DAME. 


said thé young girl, without raising her eyes, “do 
not despise me, monseigneur Pliœbus. I feel that what I am 
doing is not right.’’ 

“ Despise you, my pretty child ! ” replied the officer with 
an air of superior and distinguished gallantry, “ despise you, 
tête-Dieu ! and why ? ” 

“For having followed you ! ’’ 

“ On that point, my heauty, we don’t agréé. I ought not to 
despise you, but to hâte you.’’ 

The young girl looked at him in affright : “ Hâte me ! what 
hâve I done ? ” 

“ For having required so much urging.” 

“ Alas ! ” said she, “ ’tis because I am breaking a vow. I 
shall not find my parents ! The amulet will lose its virtue. 
But what matters it ? What need hâve I of father or mother 
now ? ” 

So saying, she fixed upon the captain her great black eyes, 
moist with joy and tenderness. 

“ Devil take me if I understand you ! ” exclaimed Phœbus. 

La Esmeralda remained silent for a moment, then a tear 
dropped from her eyes, a sigh from her lips, and she said, — 
“ Oh ! monseigneur, I love you.” 

Such a perfume of chastity, such a charm of virtue sur- 
rounded the young girl, that Phœbus did not feel completely 
at his ease beside her. But this remark emboldened him 
“ You love me ! ” he said with rapture, and he threw his arm 
round the gypsy’s waist. He had bnly been waiting for this 
opportunity. 

The priest saw it, and tested with the tip of his finger the 
point of a poniard which he wore concealed in his breast. 

“Phœbus,” continued the Bohemian, gently releasing her 
waist from the captain’s tenacious hands, “You are good, you 
are generous, you are handsome ; you saved me, me who am 
only a poor child lost in Bohemia. I had long been dreaming 
of an officer who should save my life. ’Twas of you that I 
was dreaming, before I knew you, my Phœbus ; the officer of 
my dream had a beautiful uniform like yours, a grand look, a 
sword J your name is Phœbus j Tis a beautiful name. I love 


WINDOWS WHICH OPEN ON THE BIVER 69 

your name ; I love your sword. Draw your sword, Phœbus, 
that T may see it.’^ 

“ Child ! ” said the captain, and he unsheathed his sword 
with a smile. 

The gipsy looked at the hilt, the blade ; examined the 
cipher on the gnard with adorable curiosity, and kissed the 
sword, saying, — 

“ You are the sword of a brave man. I love my captain.’’ 

Phœbns again profited by the opportunity to impress upon 
her beautiful bent neck a kiss which made the young girl 
straighten herself up as scarlet as a poppy. The priest 
gnashed his teeth over it in the dark. 

Phœbns,” resnmed the gypsy, “ let me talk to yon. Pray 
walk a little, that I may see yon at fnll . height, and that I 
may hear yonr spnrs jingle. How handsome yon are ! ” 

The captain rose to please her, chiding her with a smile of 
satisfaction, — 

What a child yon are ! By the way, my charmer, hâve 
yon seen me in my archer’s cérémonial donblet ? ” 

Alas ! 110,” she replied. 

It is very handsome ! ” 

Phœbns retnrned and seated himself beside her, bnt mnch 
doser than before. 

^^Listen, my dear — ” 

The gypsy gave him several little taps with her pretty 
hand on his month, with a childish mirth and grâce and 
gayety. 

No, no, I will not listen to yon. Do yon love me ? I 
want yon to tell me whether yon love me.” 

Do I love thee, angel of my life ! ” exclaimed the captain, 
half kneeling. My body, my blood, my sonl, ail are thine ; 
ail are for thee. I love thee, and I hâve never loved any one 
bnt thee.” 

The captain had repeated this phrase so many times, in 
many similar conjnnctnres, that he delivered it ail in one 
breath, withont committing a single mistake. At this pas- 
sionate déclaration, the gypsy raised to the dirty ceiling which 
served for the skies a glance fnll of angelic happiness. 


70 


NOTRE-DAME, 


Oh ! ’’ she murmuredj this is the moment when one 
should die ! ” 

Phœbus found the moment ’’ favorable for robbing her of 
another kiss, which went to torture the unhappy archdeacon 
in his nook. Die ! ’’ exclaimed the amorous captain, What 
are you saying, my lovely angel ? ’Tis a time for living, or 
Jupiter is only a scamp ! Die at the beginning of so sweet a 
thing ! Corne-de-hœiify what a jest ! It is not that. Listen, 
my dear Similar, Esmenarda — Pardon ! you hâve so prodig- 
iously Saracen a name that I never can get it straight. ’Tis 
a thicket which stops me short.’’ 

Good heavens ! ” said the poor girl, and I thought my 
name pretty because of its singularity ! But since it dis- 
pleases you, I would that I were called Goton.” 

Ah ! do not weep for such a trifle, my graceful maid ! 
’tis a name to which one must get accustomed, that is ail. 
When I once know it by heart, ail will go smoothly. Listen 
then, my dear Similar ; I adore you passionately. I love you 
so that ’tis simply miraculous. I know a girl who is burst- 
ing with rage over it — ” 

The jealous girl interrupted him : Who ? ” 

^^What matters that to us?” said Phœbus; do you love 
me?” 

Oh ! ” — said she. 

^^Well! that is ail. You shall see how I love you also. 
May the great de vil Neptunus spear me if I do not make you 
the happiest woman in the world. We will hâve a pretty 
little house somewhere. I will make my archers parade 
before your Windows. They are ail mounted, and set at 
défiance those of Captain Mignon. There are voulgiers, crane- 
qniniers and hand couleveiniers * I will take you to the great 
sights of the Parisians at the storehouse of Eully. Eighty 
thousand armed men, thirty thousand white harnesses, short 
coats or coats of mail ; the sixty-seven banners of the trades ; 
the standards of the parliaments, of the chamber of accounts, 
of the treasury of the générais, of the aides of the mint ; a 
devilish fine array, in short ! I will conduct you to see the 
* Yarieties of the crossbow. 


WINDOWS WHICn OPEN ON THE BIVER. 71 

lions of the Hôtel du Roi, which are wild beasts. Ail women 
love tbat/’ 

For several moments tbe young girl, absorbed in ber cbarm- 
ing thoughts, was dreaming to tbe Sound of bis voice, witbout 
listening to tbe sense of bis words. 

“ Ob ! bow bappy you will be ! ’’ continued tbe captain, and 
at tbe same time be gently unbuckled tbe gypsy’s girdle. 

“ Wbat are you doing ? ” sbe said quickly. This act of 
violence bad roused ber from ber revery. 

^^Hotbing,” replied Pœbus, was only saying tbat you 
must abandon ail tbis garb of folly, and tbe Street corner 
wben you are witb me.’’ 

Wben I am witb you, Pbœbus ! ” said tbe young girl 
tenderly. 

Sbe became pensive and silent once more. 

Tbe captain, emboldened by ber gentleness, clasped ber 
waist witbout résistance ; tben began softly to unlace tbe 
poor cbild’s corsage, and disarranged ber tucker to sucb an 
extent tbat tbe panting priest bebeld tbe gipsy’s beautiful 
sboulder emerge from tbe gauze, as round and brown as tbe 
moon rising tbrougb tbe mists of tbe horizon. 

Tbe young girl allowed Pbœbus to bav« bis way. Sbe did 
not appear to perçoive it. Tbe eye of tbe bold captain 
flasbed. 

Suddenly sbe turned towards bim, — 

Pbœbus,” sbe said, witb an expression of infinité love, 
“ instruct me in tby religion.” 

My religion ! ” exclaimed tbe captain, bursting witb laugb- 
ter, I instruct you in my religion ! Corne et tonnerre ! Wbat 
do you want witb my religion ? ” 

In order tbat we may be married,” sbe replied. 

Tbe captain’s face assumed an expression of mingled sur- 
prise and disdain, of carelessness and libertine passion. 

Ab, bab ! ” said be, do people marry ? ” 

Tbe Bobemian turned pale, and ber bead drooped sadly on 
ber breast. 

‘^My beautiful love,” resumed Pbœbus, tenderly, *^wbat 
nonsense is tbis ? A great tbing is marriage, truly ! one is 


72 


NOTRE-DAME. 


none the less loving for not having spit Latin into a priest’s 
shop ! 

While speaking thus in his softest voice, he approached 
extremely near tke gypsy ; his caressing hands resumed their 
place around her supple and délicate waist, his eye flashed 
more and more, and everything announced that Monsieur 
Phœbus was on the verge of one of those moments when 
Jupiter himself commits so many follies that Homer is 
obliged to summon a cloud to his rescue. 

But Dom Claude saw everything. The door was made of 
thoroughly rotten cask staves, which left large apertures for 
the passage of his hawklike gaze. This brown-skinned, broad- 
shouldered priest, hitherto condemned to the austere virginity 
of the cloister, was quivering and boiling in the presence of 
this night scene of love and voluptuousness. This young and 
beautiful girl given over in disarray to the ardent young man, 
made melted lead flow in his veins ; his eyes darted with sen- 
sual jealousy beneath ail those loosened pins. Any one who 
could, at that moment, hâve seen the face of the unhappy man 
glued to the wormeaten bars, would hâve thought that he 
beheld the face of a tiger glaring from the depths of a cage 
at some jackal devouring a gazelle. His eye shone like a 
candie through the cracks of the door. 

Ail at once, Phœbus, with a rapid gesture, removed the 
gypsy’s gorgerette. The poor child, who had remained pale 
and dreamy, awoke with a start ; she recoiled hastily from the 
enterprising officer, and, casting a glance at her bare neck 
and shoulders, red, confused, mute with shame, she crossed 
her two beautiful arms on her breast to conceal it. Had it 
not been for the flame which burned in her cheeks, at the 
sight of her so silent and motionless, one would hâve 
declared her a statue of Modesty. Her eyes were lowered. 

But the captain’s gesture had revealed the mysterious amu- 
let which she wore about her neck. 

What is that ? ’’ he said, seizing this pretext to approach 
once more the beautiful créature whom he had just alarmed. 

^^Don’t touch it!’’ she replied, quickly, ^^’tis my guardian. 
It will make me find my family again, if I remain worthy 


FliV^DOTr^f WmCH OPBN ON THE TtlVETt. 73 


to do so. Oh, leave me, monsieur le capitaine ! My mother ! 
My poor mother ! My mother ! Where art thon ? Corne to 
my rescne ! Hâve pity. Monsieur Phœbus, give me back my 
gorgerette ! ’’ 

Phœbus retreated and said in a cold tone, — 

Oh, mademoiselle ! I see plainly that you do not love me ! ’’ 

“ I do not love him ! exclaimed the unhappy child, and at 
the saine time she clung to the captain, whom she drew to a 
Seat beside her. “ I do not love thee, my Phœbus ? What 
art thou saying, wicked man, to break my heart ? Oh, take 
me ! take ail ! do what you will with me, I am thine. What 
matters to me the amulet ! What matters to me my mother ! 
’Tis thou who art my mother since I love thee ! Phœbus, 
my beloved Phœbus, dost thou see me ? ’Tis I. Look at me ; 
^tis the little one whom thou wilt surely not repuise, who 
cornes, who cornes herself to seek thee. My soûl, my life, my 
body, my person, ail is one thing — which is thine, my captain. 
Well, no ! We will not marry, since that displeases thee ; and 
then, what am I ? a misérable girl of the gutters ; whilst 
thou, my Phœbus, art a gentleman. A fine thing, truly ! A 
dancer wed an officer ! I was mad. Ho, Phœbus, no ; I will be 
thy mistress, thy amusement, thy pleasure, when thou wilt ; 
a girl who shall belong to thee. I was only made for that, 
soiled, despised, dishonored, but what matters it / — beloved. 
I shall be the proudest and the most j oyons of women. And 
when I grow old or ugly, Phœbus, when I am no longer good 
to love you, you will suffer me to serve you still. Others 
will embroider scarfs for you; ’tis I, the servant, who will 
care for them. You will let me polish your spurs, brush your 
doublet, dust your riding-boots. You will hâve that pity, 
will you not, Phœbus ? Meanwhile, take me ! h; re, Phœbus, 
ail this belongs to thee, only love me ! We gypsies need only 
air and love.’’ 

So saying, she threw her arms round the officer’s neck ; she 
looked up at him, supplicatingly, with a beautiful smile, and 
ail in tears. Her délicate neck rubbed against his cloth 
doublet with its rough embroideries. She writhed on her 
knees, her beautiful body half naked. The intoxicated cap- 


74 


nOTUE-DAMR 


tain pressed his ardent lips to those lovely African shoulders. 
The young girl, her eyes bent on the ceiling, as she leaned 
backwards, quivered, ail palpitating, beneath this kiss. 

Ail at once, above Phœbus’s head she beheld another head ; 
a green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soûl ; 
near this face was a hand grasping a poniard. It was the 
face and hand of the priest ; he had broken the door and he 
was there. Phœbus could not see him. The young girl 
remained motionless, frozen with terror, dumb, beneath that 
terrible apparition, like a dove which should raise its head 
at the moment when the hawk is gazing into her nest with its 
round eyes. 

She could not even utter a cry. She saw the poniard de- 
scend upon Phœbus, and rise again, reeking. 

Malédictions ! said the captain, and fell. 

She fainted. 

At the moment when her eyes closed, when ail feeling van- 
ished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of tire im- 
printed upon her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot 
iron of the executioner. 

When she recovered her senses, she was surrounded by sol- 
diers of the watch, they were carrying away the captain, 
bathed in his blood, the priest had disappeared ; the window 
at the back of the room which opened on the river was 
wide open ; they picked up a cloak which they supposed to 

belong to the officer, and she heard them saying around her, 

^Tis a sorceress, who has stabbed a captain.’^ 





BOOK EIGHTH. 


CHAPTER 1. 

THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF. 

Gringoire and the entire Court of Miracles were suffering 
mortal anxiety. For a whole month they had not known what 
had become of la Esmeralda, which greatly pained the Duke of 
Egypt and his friends the vagabonds, nor what had become of 
the goat, which redoubled Gringoire’s grief. One evening the 
gypsy had disappeared, and since that time had given no signa 
of life. Ail search had proved fruitless. Some tormenting 
bootblacks had told Gringoire about meeting lier that same 
evening near the Pont Saint-Michel, going off with an officer ; 
but this husband, after the fashion of Bohemia, was an incred- 
nions philosopher, and besides, he, better than any one else, 
knew to what a point his wife was virginal. He had been 
able to form a judgment as to the unconquerable modesty 
resulting from the combined virtues of the amulet and the 
gypsy, and he had mathematically calculated the résistance of 
that chastity to the second power. Accordingly, he was at 
ease on that score. 

Still he could not understand this disappearance. It was 
a profound sorrow. He would hâve grown thin over it, had 
that been possible. He had forgotten everything, even his 
literary tastes, even his great work, De figuris regularihus et 

75 


76 


NOTRE-DAME. 


irregiilaribus, which it was h.is intention to hâve printed with 
the first mohey which he should procure (for he had raved 
over printing, ever since he had seen the “Didascalon” of 
Hugues de Saint Victor, printed with the celebrated characters 
of Vindelin de Spire). 

One day, as he was passing sadly before the criminal Tour- 
nelle, he perceived a considérable crowd at one of the gates 
of the Palais de Justice. 

“ What is this ? he inquired of a young man who was 
Corning out. 

I know not, sir,’’ replied the young man. ’Tis said that 
they are trying a woman who hath assassin ated a gen- 
darme. It appears that there is sorcery at the bottom of it, 
the archbishop and the official hâve intervened in the case, 
and my brother, who is the archdeacon of Josas, can think 
of nothing else. How, I wished to speak with him, but I 
hâve not been able to reach him because of the throng, which 
vexes me greatly, as I stand in need of money.” 

‘‘ Alas ! sir,” said Gringoire, “ I would that I could lend 
you some, but my breeches are worn to holes, and ’tis not 
crowns which hâve doue it.” 

He dared not tell the young man that he was acquainted 
with his brother the archdeacon, to whom he had not returned 
after the scene in the church ; a négligence which embarrassed 
him. 

The scholar went his way, and Gringoire set out to follow 
the crowd which was mounting the staircase of the great 
chamber. In his opinion, there was nothing like the specta- 
cle of a criminal process for dissipating melancholy, so exhil- 
aratingly stupid are judges as a rule. The populace which he 
had joined walked and elbowed in silence. After a slow and 
tiresome march through a long, gloomy corridor, which wound 
through the court-house like the intestinal canal of the ancient 
édifice, he arrived near a low door, opening upon a hall which 
his lofty stature permitted him to survey with a glance over 
the waving heads of the rabble. 

The hall was vast and gloomy, which latter fact made it 
appear still more spacious. The day was declining j the long, 


THE CROWN CHANGE!) INTO A ERY LEAF. 77 


poiiited Windows permitted only a pale ray of light to enter, 
wliich was extingnislied before it reached the vanlted ceiling, 
an enormous trellis-work of scnlptured beams, whose thousand 
figures seeined to move confusedly in the shadows, many can- 
dies were already lighted here and there on tables, and beain- 
ing on the heads of clerks buried in masses of documents. 
The anterior portion of the hall was occupied by the crowd ; 
on the right and left were magistrates and tables ; at the end, 
upon a platform, a number of judges, whose rear rank sank 
into the shadows, sinister and motionless faces. The walls 
were sown with innumerable fleurs-de-lis. A large figure of 
Christ might be vaguely descried above the judges, and 
everywhere there were pikes and halberds, upon whose points 
the reflection of the candies placed tips of fire. 

Monsieur,’^ Gringoire inquired of one of his neighbors, 
^^who are ail those persons ranged yonder, like prelates in 
council ? ” 

“ Monsieur,’’ replied the neighbor, those on the right are 
the counsellors of the grand chamber ; those on the left, the 
councillors of inquiry ; the masters in black gowns, the mes- 
sires in red.” 

Who is that big red fellow, yonder above them, who is 
sweating ? ” pursued Gringoire. 

It is monsieur the president.” 

And those sheep behind him ? ” continued Gringoire, who 
as we hâve seen, did not love the magistracy, which arose, 
possibly, from the grudge which he cherished against the 
Palais de Justice since his dramatic misadventure. 

‘‘ They are messieurs the masters of requests of the king’s 
household.” 

And that boar in front of him ? ” 

He is monsieur the clerk of the Court of Parliament.” 

And that crocodile on the right ? ” 

Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary of the 
king.” 

And that big, black tom-cat on the left ? ” 

Master Jacques Charmolue, procurator of the king in the 
Ecclesiastical Court, with the gentlemen of the ofîicialty.” 


78 


.NOTRE-DAME. 


Corne now, monsieur,” said Gringoire, pray what are ail 
those fine fellows doing yonder ? ” 

They are judging.” 

Judging whom ? I do not see the accused.” 

^^’Tis a woman, sir. You cannot see lier. She lias lier 
back turned to us, and she is hidden from us by tbe crowd. 
Stay, yonder she is, where you see a group of partisans.” 

Who is the woman ? ” asked Gringoire. ^‘Do you know 
her name ? ” 

“ No, monsieur, I hâve but just arrived. I merely assume 
that there is some sorcery about it, since the official is présent 
at the trial.” 

Corne ! ” said our philosopher, “ we are going to see ail 
these magistrates devour human flesh. ’Tis as good a specta- 
cle as any other.” 

Monsieur,” remarked his neighbor, ^Ghink you not, that 
Master Jacques Charmolue has a very sweet air ? ” 

Hum ! ” replied Gringoire. I distrust a sweetness which 
hath pinched nostrils and thin lips.” 

Here the bystanders imposed silence upon the two chat- 
terers. They were listening to an important déposition. 

“ Messeigneurs,” said an old woman in the niiddle of the 
hall, whose form was so concealed beneath her garments that 
one would hâve pronounced her a walking heap of rags ; 

Messeigneurs, the thing is as true as that I am la Falourdel, 
established these forty years at the Pont Saint Michel, and 
paying regularly my rents, lord’s dues, and quit rents ; at the 
gâte opposite the house of Tassin-Caillart, the dyer, which is 
on the side up the river — a poor old woman now, but a pretty 
maid in former days, my lords. Some one said to me lately, 

^ La Falourdel, don’t use your spinning-wheel too much in the 
evening ; the devil is fond of combing the distafis of old 
women with his horns. ’Tis certain that the surly monk who 
was round about the temple last year, now prowls in the City. 
Take caïe, La Falourdel, that he doth not knock at your 
door.’ One evening I was spinning on my wheel, there cornes 
a knock at my door ; I ask who it is. They swear. I open. 
Two men enter. A man in black and a handsome officer. Of 


THE CnoWN CHANGEE INTO A DRY LEAF. 79 


the black man nothing could be seen but bis eyes, two coals 
of fire. Ail the rest was bat and cloak. They say to me, — 
‘ The Sainte-Marthe chamber.’ — ’ïis my upper cbainber, iny 
lords, my cleanest. They give me a crown. I put the crown 
in my draAver, and I say : ‘ This shall go to buy tripe at the 
slaughter-house of la Gloriette to-morrow.’ We go up stairs. 
On arriving at the upper chamber, and while my back is 
turned, the black man disappears. That dazed me a bit. The 
officer, who was as handsome as a great lord, goes down 
stairs again with me. He goes ont. In about the time it 
takes to spin a quarter of a handful of flax, he returns with a 
beautiful young girl, a doll who would hâve shone like the sun 
had she been côiffed. She had with her a goat ; a big billy- 
goat, whether black or white, I no longer remember. That 
set me to thinking. The girl does not concern me, but the 
goat ! T love not those beasts, they hâve a beard and horns. 
They are so like a man. And then, they smack of the witches, 
sabbath. However, I say nothing. I had the crown. That 
is right, is it not, Monsieur Judge ? I show the captain and 
the wench to the upper chamber, and I leave them alone; 
that is to say, with the goat. I go down and set to spinning 
again — I must inform you that my house bas a ground floor 
and story above. I know not why I fell to thinking of the 
surly.monk whom the goat had put into my head again, and 
then the beautiful girl was rather strangely decked out. Ail 
at once, I hear a cry upstairs, and something falls on the floor 
and tl.e window opens. I run to mine which is beneath it, 
and I behold a black mass pass before my eyes and fall into 
the water. It was a phantom clad like a priest. It was a 
moonlight night. I saw him quite plainly. He was swim- 
ming in the direction of the city. Then, ail of a tremble, I 
call the watch. The gentlemen of the police enter, and not 
knowing just at the first moment what the matter was, and 
being merry, they beat me. I explain to them. We go up 
stairs, and what do we find ? my poor chamber ail blood, the 
captain stretched out at full length with a dagger in his neck, 
the girl pretending to be dead, and the goat ail in a fright. 
^Pretty work!^ I say, ^I shall bave to wash that floor for 


80 


NOTRE-DAME. 


more than a fortnight. It will hâve to be scraped ; it will be 
a terrible job.’ They carried olî the officer, poor young man, 
and the wench with her bosom ail bare. But wait, the worst 
is that on the next day, when I wanted to take the crown to 
buy tripe, I found a dead leaf in its place.” 

ïhe old woman ceased. A murmiir of horror ran through 
the audience. 

•• That phantom, that goat, — ail sinacks of magic,” said one 
of Gringore’s neighbors. 

“ And that dry leaf ! ” added another. 

^‘ISTo doubt about it,” joined in a third, she is a witch who 
has dealings with the surly monk, for the purpose of plunder- 
ing officers.” 

Gringoire himself was not disinclined to regard this as 
altogether alarming and probable. 

^‘Goody Falourdel,” said the president majestically, ^^have 
you nothing more to communicate to the court ? ” 

‘^No, monseigneur,” replied the crone, “ except that the 
report has described my house as a hovel and stinking ; which 
is an outrageons fashion of speaking. The houses on the 
bridge are not imposing, because there are such multitudes of 
people ; but, nevertheless, the butchers continue to dwell 
there, who are wealthy folk, and married to very proper and 
handsome women.” 

The magistrate who had reminded Gringoire of a crocodile 
rose, — 

Silence ! ” said he. “ I pray the gentlemen not to lose 
sight of the fact that a dagger was found on the person of 
the accused. Goody Falourdel, hâve you brought that leaf 
into which the crown which the démon gave you was trans- 
formed ? ” 

“ Yes, monseigneur,” she replied; I found it again. Here 
it is.” 

A bailiff handed the dead leaf to the crocodile, who made a 
doleful shake of the head, and passed it on to the president, 
who gave it to the procurator of the king in the ecclesiasti- 
cal court, and thus it made the circuit of the hall. 

^^It is a birch leaf,” said Master Jacques Charmoluo. ‘^A 
fresh proof of magic.” 


THE CROWN CHANGED INTO A DRY LEAF. 81 


A coimsellor took up tke word. 

“Witness, two men went upstairs together in your house : 
the black inan, whom y ou first saw disappear and afterwards 
swimming in the Seine, with his priestly garments, and the 
officer. Which of the two handed yoii the crown ? ” 

The old woman pondered for a moment and then said, — 

The officer.” 

A mnrmur ran through the crowd. 

Ah ! ” thought Gringoire,” this makes some doubt in my 
mind.” 

But Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordinary to the 
king, interposed once more. 

‘‘1 will recall to these gentlemen, that in the déposition 
taken at his bedside, the assassinated officer, while declaring 
that he had a vague idea when the black man accosted him 
that the latter might be the surly monk, added that the phan- 
toni had pressed him eagerly to go and make acquaintance 
with the accused ; and upon his, the captain’s, remarking that 
he had no money, he had given him the crown which the said 
officer paid to la Falourdel. Hence, that crown is the money 
of hell.” 

This conclusive observation appeared to dissipate ail the 
doubts of Gringoire and the other sceptics in the audience. 

You hâve the documents, gentlemen,” added the king’s. 
advocate, as he took his seat ; ^^you can consult the testimony 
of Phœbus de Châteaupers.” • 

At that naine, the accused sprang up, her head rose above 
the throng. Gringoire with horror recognized la Esmeralda. 

She was pale ; her tresses, formerly so gracefully braided 
and spangled with sequins, hung in disorder j her lips were 
blue, her hollow eyes were terrible. Alas ! 

‘‘ Phœbus ! ” she said, in bewilderment ; “ where is he ? O 
messeigneurs ! before you kill me, tell me, for pity sake, 
whether he still lives ? ” 

^^Hold your tongue, woman/’ replied the president, ^^that is 
no affair of ours.” 

Oh ! for mercy’s sake, tell me if he is alive ! ” she re- 
peated, clasping her beautiful emaciated hands ; and the Sound 
of her chains in contact with her dress, was heard._ 


82 


NOTBE-BAME. 


said the king’s advocate roughly, is dying. 
Are you satisfied ? 

The unhappy girl fell back on her criminaTs seat, speech- 
less, tearless, white as a wax figure. 

The president bent down to a nian at his feet, who wore a 
gold cap and a black gown, a chain on his neck and a wand in 
his hand. 

^^Bailiff, bring in the second accused.” 

Ail eyes turned towards a small door, which opened, and, to 
the great agitation of Gringoire, gave passage to a pretty goat 
with horns and hoofs of gold. The élégant beast halted for a 
moment on the threshold, stretching ont its neck as though, 
perched on the summit of a rock, it had before its eyes an im- 
mense horizon. Suddenly it caught sight of the gypsy girl, 
and leaping over the table and the head of a clerk, in two 
boimds it was at her knees ; then it rolled gracefully on its 
mistress’s feet, soliciting a word or a caress ; but the accused 
remained motionless, and poor Djali himself obtained not a 
glance. 

^•Eh, why — Tis my villanoiis beast,” said old Ealourdel, 
I recognize the two perfectly ! ” 

Jacques Charmolue interfered. 

If the gentlemen please, we will proceed to the examina- 
tion of the goat.” He was, in fact, the second criminal. 
Nothing more simple in those days than a suit of sorcery in- 
stituted against an animal. We find, among others in the 
accounts of the provost’s office for 1466, a curions detail con- 
cerning the expenses of the trial of Gillet-Soulart and his sow, 
executed for their demerits,” at Corbeil. Everything is there, 
the cost of the pens in which to place the sow, the five hun- 
dred bundles of brushwood purchased at the port of Morsant, 
the three pints of wine and the bread, the last repast of the 
victim fraternally shared by the executioner, down to the 
eleven days of gnard and food for the sow, at eight deniers 
parisis each. Sometimes, they went even further than ani- 
mais. The capitularies of Charlemagne and of Louis le 
Débonnaire impose severe penalties on fiery phantoms which 
présumé to appear in the air. 


THE CROWN CHANGEB INTO A DRY LE AF. 83 

Meanwhile the procurator liad exclaimed : the démon 

which possesses this goat, and which has resisted ail exor- 
cisms, persists in its deeds of witclicraft, if it alarms the court 
with them, we warn it that we shall be forced to put in 
réquisition against it the gallows or the stake. 

Gringoire broke out into a cold perspiration. Charmolue 
took from the table the gypsy’s tambourine, and presenting it 
to the goat, in a certain manner, asked the latter, — 

What o’clock is it ? 

The goat looked at it with an intelligent eye, raised its 
gilded hoof, and struck seven blows. 

It was, in fact, seven o’clock. A movement of terror ran 
through the crowd. 

Gringoire could not endure it. 

^^He is destroying himself!” he cried aloud; You see 
well that he does not know what he is doing.” 

Silence among the louts at the end of the hall ! ” said the 
bailiff sharply. 

Jacques Charmolue, by the aid of the same manœuvres of 
the tambourine, made the goat perform many other tricks 
connected with the date of the day, the month of the year, 
etc., which the reader has already witnessed. And, by virtue 
of an optical illusion peculiar to judicial proceedings, these 
same spectators who had, probably, more than once applauded 
in the public square Djali’s innocent magic were terrified by 
it beneath the roof of the Palais de Justice. The goat was 
undoubtedly the devil. 

It was far worse when the procurator of the king, having 
emptied upon a floor a certain bag filled with movable letters, 
which Djali wore round his neck, they beheld the goat extract 
with his hoof from the scattered alphabet the fatal name of 
Fhœbus. The witchcraft of which the captain had been the 
victim appeared irresistibly demonstrated, and in the eyes of 
ail, the gypsy, that ravishing dancer, who had so often daz- 
zled the passers-by with her grâce, was no longer anything 
but a frightful vampire. 

However, she betrayed. no sign of life; neither Djali’s 
graceful évolutions, nor the menaces of the court, nor the sup- 


84 


NOTBE-DAME. 


pressed imprécations of the spectators any longer reached lier 
niind. 

In order to arouse her, a police officer was obliged to shake 
her uiiniercifully, and the president had to raise his voice, — 

^•Girl, you are of the Bohemian race, addicted to deeds of 
witchcraft. You, in complicity with the bewitched goat im- 
plicated in this suit, during the night of the twenty-ninth 
of March last, murdered and stabbed, in concert with the 
powers of darkness, by the aid of charms and underhand prac- 
tices, a captain of the king’s arches of the watch, Phœbus de 
Châteaupers. Do you persist in denying it ? ” 

‘‘ Horror ! ” exclaimed the young girl, hiding her face in her 
hands. My Phœbus ! Oh, this is hell ! ” 

Do you persist in your déniai ? ” demanded the president 
coldly. 

“ Do I deny it ? ” she said witli terrible accents ; and she 
rose with flashing eyes. 

The president continued squarely, — 

“ Then how do you explain the facts laid to your charge ? ” 

She replied in a broken voice, — 

‘‘ I hâve already told you. I do not know. ’Twas a priest, 
a priest whom I do not know ; an infernal priest who pursues 
me î ’’ 

“That is it,’’ retorted the judge ; ^Ghe surly monk.” 

Oh, gentlemen ! hâve mercy ! I am but a poor girl — ” 

“ Of Egypt,” said the judge. 

Master Jacques Charmolue interposed sweetly, — 

In view of the sad obstinacy of the accused, I demand the 
application of the torture.” 

“ Granted,” said the president. 

The unhappy girl quivered in every linib. But she rose at 
the command of the men with partisans, and walked with a 
tolerably firm step, preceded by Charmolue and the priests of 
the officiality, between two rows of halberds, towards a 
medium-sized door which suddenly opened and closed again 
behind her, and which produced upon the grief-stricken Grin- 
goire the effect of a horrible mouth which had just devoured 
her. 


THE CEO WN CHANGE!) INTO A BEY LE AF. 85 


Wlieii slie disappeared, they heard a plaintive bleating ; it 
was tlie little goat mourning. 

The sitting of the court was suspended. A counsellor hav- 
ing remarked that the gentlemen were fatigued, and that it 
would be a long time to wait until the torture was at an end, 
the president replie d that a magistrate must know how to 
sacrifice himself to his duty. 

^^What an annoying and vexations hussy,’^ said an aged 
judge, to get herself put to the question when one has not 
supped ! 




CHAPTEE II. 

CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS CHANGED INTO A 
DRY LEAF, 

After ascending and descending several steps in the corri- 
dors, which were so dark that they were lighted by lamps 
at mid-day, La Esmeralda, still snrrounded by ber lugubrious 
escort, was tbrust by tbe police into a gloomy cbamber. 
Tbis cbamber, circular in form, occupied tbe ground floor of 
one of tbose great towers, wbicb, even in oiir own century, 
still pierce tbrougb tbe layer of modem édifices with wbicb 
modem Paris bas covered ancient Paris. Tbere were no Win- 
dows to tbis cellar; no otber opening tban tbe entrance, 
wbicb was low, and closed by an enormous iron door. bTever- 
tbeless, ligbt was not lacking ; a furnace bad been constructed 
in tbe tbickness of tbe wall ; a large tire was ligbted tbere, 
wbicb filled tbe vanlt witb its crimson reflections and 
deprived a misérable candie, wbicb stood in one corner, of 
ail radiance. Tbe iron grating wbicb served to close tbe 
oven, being raised at tbat moment, allowed only a view at 
tbe moutb of tbe flaming vent-bole in tbe dark wall, the 
lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed 
teeth, set fiat apart ; wbicb made the furnace resemble one of 
tbose mouths of dragons wbicb spout fortb fiâmes in ancient 
legends. By the ligbt wbicb escaped from it, tbe prisoner 
beheld, ail about tbe room, frigbtful instruments wbose use 
sbe did not understand. In the centre lay a leatber mattress, 

86 


CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN. 


87 


placed almost flat upon the ground, over which hung a strap 
provided with a buckle, attached to a brass ring in the mouth 
of a fiat-nosed monster carved in the keystone of the vault. 
Tongs, pincers, large ploughshares, filled the interior of the 
furnace, and glowed in a confnsed heap on the coals. The 
sanguine light of the furnace illuminated in the chamber only 
a confused mass of horrible things. 

This Tartarus was called simply, The Question Chamber. 

On the bed, in a négligent attitude, sat Pierrat Torterue, 
the official torturer. His underlings, two gnomes with square 
faces, leather aprons, and linen breeches, were moving the 
iron instruments on the coals. 

In vain did the poor girl summon up her courage ; on enter- 
ing this chamber she was stricken with horror. 

The sergeants of the bailiff of the courts drew up in line on 
one side, the priests of the officiality on the other. A clerk, 
inkhorn, and a table were in one corner. 

Master Jacques Charmolue approached the gypsy with a 
very sweet smile. 

^^My dear child,’^ said he, ^^do you still persist in your 
déniai ? ” 

“ Yes,’’ she replied, in a dying voice. 

“ In that case,’’ .replied Charmolue, “ it will be very painful 
for us to hâve to question you more urgently than we should 
like. Pray take the trouble to seat yourself on this bed. 
Master Pierrat, make room for mademoiselle, and close the 
door.” 

Pierrat rose with a growl. 

If I shut the door,” he muttered, my lire will go out.” 

Well, my dear fellow,” replied Charmolue, leave it open 
then.” 

Meanwhile, la Esmeralda had remained standing. That 
leather bed on which so many unhappy wretches had writhed, 
frightened her. Terror chilled the very marrow of her bones ; 
she stood there bewildered and stupefied. At a sign from 
Charmolue, the two assistants took her and placed her in a 
sitting posture on the bed. They did her no harm ; but when 
these men touched her, when that leather touched her, she felt 


88 


NOTBE-BAME, 


ail lier blood retreat to ber beart. Sbe cast a frigbtened look 
around tbe cbamber. It seemed to ber as tbougb sbe bebeld 
advancing from ail quarters towards ber, witb tbe intention of 
crawling up ber body and biting and pincbing ber, ail tbose 
bideons implements of torture, wbicb as compared to tbe in- 
struments of ail sorts sbe bad bitberto seen, were like wbat 
bats, centipedes, and spiders are among insects and birds. 

Wbere is tbe pbysician ? asked Cbarmolue. 

“Here,” replied a black gown wbom sbe bad not before 
noticed. 

Sbe sbuddered. 

Mademoiselle,” resumed tbe caressing voice of tbe procu- 
crator of tbe Ecclesiastical court, for tbe tbird time, do you 
persist in denying tbe deeds of wbicb you are accused ? ” 

Tbis time sbe could only make a sign witb ber bead. 

You persist ? ” said Jacques Cbarmolue. Tben it grieves 
me deeply, but I must fulfil my office.” 

‘^Monsieur le Procureur du Koi,” said Pierrat abruptly, 
How sball we begin ? ” 

Cbarmolue besitated for a moment witb tbe ambiguous 
grimace of a poet in searcb of a rbyme. 

“ Witb tbe boot,” be said at last. 

Tbe unfortunate girl felt berself so utterly abandoned by 
God and men, tbat ber bead fell upon ber breast like an inert 
tbing wbicb bas no power in itself. 

Tbe tormentor and tbe pbysician approacbed ber simulta- 
neously. At tbe saine time, tbe two assistants began to fum- 
ble among tbeir bideous arsenal. 

At tbe clanking of tbeir frigbtful irons, tbe unbappy cbild 
quivered like a dead frog wbicb is being galvanized. Ob ! ” 
sbe murmured, so low tbat no one beard ber ; ob, my Pbœ- 
bus ! ” Tben sbe fell back once more into ber immobility and 
ber marble silence. Tbis spectacle would bave rent any otber 
beart tban tbose of ber judges. One would bave pronounced 
ber a poor sinful soûl, being tortured by Satan beneatb tbe 
scarlet wicket of bell. Tbe misérable body wbicb tbat frigbt- 
ful swarm of saws, wbeels, and racks were about to clasp in 
tbeir clutcbes, tbe being wbo was about to be manipulated by 


CONTINUATION OF THF CBOWN 


89 


the harsli hands of executioners and pincer s, was that gentle, 
white, fragile creatnre, a poor grain of millet whicli human jus- 
tice was handing over to tlie terrible mills of torture to grind. 

Meanwhile, the callous hands of Pierrat Torterue’s assist- 
ants had bared that charming leg, that tiny foot, which had so 
often amazed the passers-by with their delicacy and beauty, in 
the squares of Paris. 

’Tis a shame ! muttered the tormentor, glancing at these 
graceful and délicate forms. 

Had the archdeacon been présent, he certainly would hâve 
recalled at that moment his Symbol of the spider and the fly. 
Soon the unfortunate girl, through a mist which spread before 
her eyes, beheld the boot approach ; she soon beheld her foot 
encased between iron plates disappear in the frightful appara- 
tus. Then terror restored her strength. 

Pake that off ! ” she cried angrily ; and drawing herself 
up, with her hair ail dishevelled : “ Mercy ! ” 

She darted from the bed to fling herself at the feet of the 
king’s procurator, but her leg was fast in the heavy block of 
oak and iron, and she sank down upon the boot, more crushed 
than a bee with a lump of lead on its wing, 

At a sign from Charmolue, she was replaced on the bed, and 
two coarse hands adjusted to her délicate waist the strap 
which hung from the ceiling. 

For the last time, do you confess the facts in the case ? 
demanded Charmolue, with his imperturbable benignity. 

I am innocent.’’ 

“ Then, mademoiselle, how do you explain the circumstance 
laid to your charge ? ” 

“ Alas, monseigneur, I do not know.” 

‘‘ So you deny them ? ” 

‘^All!” 

^^Proceed,” said Charmolue to Pierrat. 

Pierrat turned the handle of the screw-jack, the boot was 
contracted, and the unhappy girl uttered one of those horri- 
ble cries which hâve no orthography in any human language. 

^^Stop!” said Charmolue to Pierrat. ^^Do you confess ? ” 
he said to the gypsy. 


90 


NOTRE-DAME. 


AU ! cried the wretched girl. I confess ! I confess ! 
IMercy ! ” 

She had not calculated her strength when she faced the 
torture. Poor child, whose life up to that time had been so 
joyous, so pleasant, so sweet, the first pain had conquered her ! 

Humanity forces me to tell you/’ remarked the king’s pro- 
curator, ‘‘ that in confessing, it is death that you miist expect.” 

“ I certainly hope so ! ” said she. And she fell back upon 
the leather bed, dying, doubled up, allowing herself to hang 
suspended from the strap buckled round her waist. 

Corne, fair one, hold up a little/’ said Master Pierrat, rais- 
ing her. “You hâve the air of the lamb of the Golden Fleece 
which hangs from Monsieur de Bourgogne’s neck.’’ 

Jacques Charmolue raised his voice, — 

“ Clerk, Write. Young Bohemian maid, you confess your 
participation in the feasts, witches’ sabbaths, and witchcrafts 
of hell, with ghosts, hags, and vampires ? Answer.” 

“ Yes,’^ she said, so low that her words were lost in her 
breathing. 

“You confess to having seen the ram which Beelzebub 
causes to appear in the clouds to call together the witches’ 
sabbath, and which is beheld by socerers alone ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ You confess to having adored the heads of Bophomet, 
those abominable idols of the Templars ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“•To having had habituai dealings with the devil under the 
form of a goat familiar, joined with you in the suit ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Lastly, you avow and confess to having, with the aid of 
the démon, and of the phantom vulgarly known as the surly 
monk, on the night of the twenty-ninth of March last, 
murdered and assassinated a captain named Phœbus de Châ- 
teaupers ? ” 

She raised her large, staring eyes to the magistrate, and 
replied, as though mechanically, without convulsion or agi- 
tation, — 

“ Yes.’’ 


CONTINUATION OF THE CROWN, 


91 


It was évident that everything witliin her was broken. 

“ Write, clerk/’ said Charmoliie. And, addressing the tor- 
tiirers, Release tlie prisoner, and take her back to the 
court.’’ 

When the prisoner had been imbooted,” the procurator of 
the ecclesiastical court exaniined her foot, which was Still 
swollen with pain. Corne,” said he, “ there’s no great harm 
done. You shrieked in good season. You could still dance, 
iny beauty ! ” 

Then he turned to his acolytes of the officiality, — 

‘‘ Behold justice enlightened at last ! This is a solace, 
gentlemen ! Madamoiselle will bear us witness that we hâve 
acted with ail possible gentleness.” 



I 



CHAPTEE III. 

END OF THE CROWN WHICH WAS TURNED INTO A DRY LEAP. 

When she re-entered the audience hall, pale and limping, 
she was received with a general murmur of pleasure. On the 
part of the audience there was the feeling of impatience grati- 
fied which one expériences at the theatre at the end of the 
last entr’acte of the comedy, when the curtain rises and the 
conclusion is about to begin. On the part of the judges, it 
was the hope of getting their suppers sooner. 

The little goat also bleated with joy. He tried to run 
towards his mistress, but they had tied him to the bench. 

Night was fully set in. The candies, whose number had not 
been increased, cast so little light, that the walls of the hall 
could not be seen. The shadows there enveloped ail objects 
in a. sort of mist. A few apathetic faces of judges al one could 
be dimly discerned. Opposite thein, at the extremity of the 
long hall, they could see a vaguely white point standing ont 
against the sombre background. This was the accused. 

She had dragged herself to her place. When Charmolue 
had installed himself in a magisterial manner in his own, he 
seated himself, then rose and said, without exhibiting too 
much self-complacency at his success, — “The accused has 
confessed all.’^ 

“Bohemian girl,’’ the president continued, “hâve you 
avowed ail your deeds of magic, prostitution, and assassina- 
tion on Phœbus de Châteaupers.” 

,92 


ENT> OF THE CROWN. 93 

Her heart contracted. She was lieard to sob amid the 
darkness. 

^^Anytbing you like,” she replied feebly, ^^but kill me 
quickly ! ” 

‘‘ Monsieur, procurator of the king in the ecclesiastical 
courts,” said the president, “ the chamber is ready to hear you 
in your charge.” 

Master Charmolue exhibited an alarming note book, and 
began to read, with many gestures and the exaggerated accen- 
tuation of the pleader, an oration in Latin, wherein ail the 
proofs of the suit were piled up in Ciceronian périphrases, 
flanked with quotations from Plautus, his favorite comic 
author. We regret that we are not able to offer to our 
readers this remarkable piece. The orator pronounced it with 
marvellous action. Before lie had finished the exordium, the per- 
spiration was starting from his brow, and his eyes from his head. 

Ail at once, in the middle of a fine period, he interrupted 
himself, and his glance, ordinarily so gentle and even stupid, 
became menacing. 

Gentlemen,” he exclaimed (this time in French, for it was 
not in his copy book), Satan is so mixed up in this affair, 
that here he is présent at our debates, and making sport of 
their majesty. Behold ! ” 

So saying, he pointed to the little goat, who, on seeing 
Charmolue gesticulating, had, in point of fact, thought it 
appropriate to do the same, and had seated himself on his 
haunches, reproducing to the best of his ability, with his fore- 
paws and his bearded head the pathetic pantomine of the 
king’s procurator in the ecclesiastical court. This was, if the 
reader remembers, one of his prettiest accomplishments. This 
incident, this last proof, produced a great effect. The goat’s 
hoofs were tied, and the king’s procurator resumed the thread 
of his éloquence. 

It was very long, but the peroration was admirable. Here 
is the concluding phrase ; let the reader add the hoarse voice 
and the breathless gestures of Master Charmolue, — 

Ideo, domni, coram stryga demonstrata, crimine patente, 
intentione criminis existente, in nomine sanctæ ecclesiœ Nostræ- 


94 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Dominæ Farisiensis quæ est in saisina habendi omnimodam 
altam et bassam justitiam in ilia hac intemerata Civitatis insula, 
tenore 'præsentium deelavemus nos requirere, ])rimo, aliquamdam 
2)ecitniaria7n indemnitatem ; secundo^ amendationem honora- 
bllem ante portalium maximum Nostî'æ-Dominæ, ecclesiæ cathe- 
dralis ; tertio, sententiam in virtute cujus ista styrga cum sua 
capella, seu in trivio vulgariter dicto la Grève, seu in insula 
exeunte in fluvio Secanœ, juxta pointam juardini regalis, execu- 
tatæ sint ! ” * 

He put on his cap again and seated himself. 

Ekeu ! ’’ sighed the broken-hearted Gringoire, bassa lat- 
initas — bastard latin ! ” 

Anotber inan in a black gown rose near the accused ; he was 
her lawyer. The judges, who were fasting, began to grumble. 

Advocate, be brief,’^ said the president. 

Monsieur the President,’’ replied the advocate, “ since the 
défendant has confessed the crime, I hâve only one word to 
say to these gentlemen. Here is a text from the Salie law ; 
^ If a witch hath eaten a man, and if she be convicted of it, 
she shall pay a fine of eight thousand deniers, which amount 
to two hundred sous of gold.’ May it please the chamber 
to condemn my client to the fine ? ” 

“An abrogated text,” said the advocate extraordinary of 
the king. 

“ Nego, I deny it,” replied the advocate. 

“ Put it to the vote ! ” said one of the councillors \ “ the 
crime is manifest, and it is late.” 

They proceeded to take a vote without leaving the room. 
The judges signified their assent without giving their reasons, 
they were in a hurry. Their capped heads were seen uncov- 
ering one after the other, in the gloom, at the lugubrious ques- 
tion addressed to them by the president in a low voice. The 
poor accused had the appearance of looking at them, but her 
troubled eye no longer saw. 

Then the clerk began to Write ; then he handed a long parch- 
ment to the president. 

* The substance of this exordium is contained in the présidents 
sentence. 


END OF THE CROWN. 


95 


Thisn the unhappy giii heard the people moving, the pikes 
clashing, and a freezing voice saying to lier, — 

“ Bohemian wench, on the day when it shall seem good to 
OUI* lord the king, at the hour of noon, you will be taken in a 
tumbrel, in your shift, with bare feet, and a rope about your 
neck, before the grand portai of Notre-Dame, and you will 
there make an apology with a wax torch of the weight of 
two pounds in your hand, and thence you will be conducted to 
the Place de Grève, where you will be hanged and strangled 
on the town gibbet ; and likewise your goat ; and you will pay 
to the official three lions of gold, in réparation of the crimes 
by you committed and by you confessed, of sorcery and 
magic, debauchery and murder, upon the person of the Sieur 
Phœbus de Châteaupers. May God hâve mercy on your 
soûl ! ” 

“ Oh ! ’tis a dream ! ” she murmured ; and she felt rough 
hands bearing her away. 




CHAPTER ly. 

LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA LEAVE ALL HOPE BEHIND, YE 

WHO ENTER HERE. 

In the Middle Ages, when an édifice was complété, there 
was almost as mucli of it in the earth as above it. Unless 
built upon piles, like Notre-Dame, a palace, a fortress, a 
church, had always a double bottom. In cathedrals, it was, 
in some sort, another subterranean cathédral, low, dark, 
mysterious, blind, and mute, under the upper nave which was 
overflowing with light and reverberating with organs and bells 
day and night. Sometimes it was a sepulchre. In palaces, 
in fortresses, it was a prison, sometimes a sepulchre also, 
sometimes both together. These mighty buildings, whose 
mode of formation and végétation we hâve elsewhere ex- 
plained, had not simply foundations, but, so to speak, roots 
which ran branching through the soil in chambers, galleries, 
and staircases, like the construction above. Thus churches, 
palaces, fortresses, had the earth half way up their bodies. The 
cellars of an édifice formed another édifice, into which one 
descended instead of ascending, and which extended its sub- 
terranean grounds under the external piles of the monu- 
ment, like those forests and mountains which are ' reversed 
in the mirror-like waters of a lake, beneath the forests and 
mountains of the banks. 

At the fortress of Saint- Antoine, at the Palais de Justice of 
Paris, at the Louvre, these subterranean édifices were prisons. 

96 


LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA. 


97 


The stories of these prisons, as they sank into the soil, grew 
constantly narrower and more gloomy. They were so many 
zones, where the shades of horror were graduated. Dante 
could never imagine anything better for his hell. These 
tunnels of cells usually terminated in a sack of a lowest 
dungeon, with a vat-like bottôm, where Dante placed Satan, 
where society placed those condemned to death. A misérable 
human existence, once interred there ; farewell light, air, life, 
ogni speranza — every hope ; it only came forth to the scaffold 
or the stake. Sometimes it rotted there ; human justice 
called this forgettmg. Between men and himself, the con- 
demned man felt a pile of stones and jailers weighing down 
apon his head ; and the entire prison, the massive bastille 
was nothing more than an enormous, complicated lock, which 
barred him off from the rest of the world. 

It was in a sloping cavity ^f this description, in the ou- 
hliettes excavated by Saint-Louis, in the inpace of the Tour- 
nelle, that la Esmeralda had been placed on being condemned 
to death, through fear of her escape, no doubt, with the colos- 
sal court-house over her head. Poor fly, who could not hâve 
lifted even one of its blocks of stone ! 

Assuredly, Providence and society had been equally unjust ; 
such an excess of unhappiness and of torture was not neces- 
sary to break so frail a créature. 

There she lay, lost in the shadows, buried, hidden, immured. 
Any one who could hâve beheld her in this State, after having 
seen her laugh and dance in the sun, would hâve shuddered. 
Cold as night, cold as death, not a breath of air in her tresses, 
not a human sound in her ear, no longer a ray of light in her 
eyes ; snapped in twain, crushed with chains, crouching beside 
a jug and a loaf, on a little straw, in a pool of water, which 
was formed under her by the sweating of the prison walls ; 
without motion, almost without breath, she had no longer the 
power to suffer; Phœbus, the sun, midday, the open air, the 
streets of Paris, the dances with applause, the sweet bab- 
blings of love with the ofïicer ; then the priest, the old crone, 
the poignard, the blood, the torture, the gibbet ; ail this did, 
indeed, pass before her mind, sometimes as a charming and 


98 


NOTRE-DAME. 


golden vision, sometimes as a hideous nightmare ; but it was 
no longer anything but a vague and horrible struggle, lost in 
the glooni, or distant music played up above ground, and 
which was no longer audible at the depth where the unhappy 
girl had fallen. 

Since she had been there, she had neither waked nor slept. 
In that inisfortune^ in that cell, she could no longer distin- 
guish her waking hours from slumber, dreains from reality, 
any more than day from night. AU this was mixed, broken, 
floating, disseminated confusedly in her thought. She no 
longer felt, she no longer knew, she no longer thought ; at 
the most, she only dreamed. Never had a living créature 
been thrust more deeply into nothingness. 

Thus benumbed, frozen, petrified, she had barely noticed 
on two or three occasions, the sound of a trap door opening 
somewhere above her, without^ven permitting the passage of 
a little light, and through which a hand had tossed her a bit 
of black bread. Nevertheless, this periodical visit of the 
jailer was the sole communication which was left her with 
mankind. 

A single thing still mechanically occupied her ear ; above 
her head, the dampness was filtering through the mouldy 
stones of the vault, and a drop of water dropped from them 
at regular intervals. She listened stupidly to the noise made 
by this drop of water as it fell into the pool beside her. 

This drop of water falling from time to time into that pool, 
was the only movement which still went on around her, the 
only dock which marked the time, the only noise which 
reached her of ail the noise made on the surface of the earth. 

To tell the whole, however, she also felt, from time to time, 
in that cesspool of mire and darkness, something cold passing 
over her foot or her arm, and she shuddered. 

How long had she been there ? She did not know. She 
had a recollection of a sentence of death pronounced some- 
where, against some one, then of having been herself carried 
away, and of waking up in darkness and silence, chilled to 
the heart. She had dragged herself along on her hands. 
Then iron rings that eut her ankles, and chains had rattled. 


LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA. 


99 


She had recognized the fact that ail around lier was wall, that 
below ber there was a pavement covered with moisture and a 
truss of straw ; but neither lamp nor air-hole. Then sbe had 
seated herself on that straw and, sometimes, for the sake of 
changing her attitude, on the last stone step in ber dungeon. 

For a while she had tried to count the black minutes meas- 
ured off for her by the drop of water; but that melancholy 
labor of an ailing brain had broken off of itself in her head, 
and had left her in stupor. 

At length, one day, or one night, (for midnight and midday 
were of the same color in that sepulchre), she heard above her 
a louder noise than was usually made by the turnkey when he 
brought her bread and jug of water. She raised her head, 
and beheld a ray of reddish light passing through the crevices 
in the sort of trapdoor contrived in the roof of the iiipace. 

At the same time, the heavy lock creaked, the trap grated 
on its rusty hinges, turned, and she beheld a lantern, a hand, 
and the lower portions of the bodies of two men, the door 
being too low to admit of her seeing their heads. The light 
pained her so acutely that she shut her eyes. 

When she opened them again the door was closed, the lan- 
tern was deposited on one of the steps of the staircase ; a 
man alone stood before her. A monk’s black cloak fell to his 
feet, a cowl of the same color concealed his face. Nothing 
was visible of his person, neither face nor hands. It was a 
long, black shroud standing erect, and beneath which some- 
thing could be felt moving. She gazed fixedly for several 
minutes at this sort of spectre. But neither he nor she 
spoke. One would hâve pronounced them two statues con- 
fronting each other. Two things only seemed alive in that 
cavern ; the wick of the lantern, which sputtered on account 
of the dampness of the atmosphère, and the drop of water 
from the roof, which eut this irregular sputtering with its 
rnonotonous splash, and made the light of the lantern quiver 
in concentric waves on the oily water of the pool. 

At last the prisoner broke the silence. 

“ Who are you ? 

A priest.” 


100 


NOTBE-DAME. 


The words, the accent, the sound of his voice made her 
tremble. 

The priest continued, in a hollow voice, — 

Are you prepared ? 

’ For what ? 

^^To die.’^ 

Oh ! said she, will it be soon ? 

To-morrow.’’ 

Her head, which had been raised with joy, fell back upon 
her breast. 

’Tis very far away yet ! she murmured ; why could 
they not hâve done it to-day ? ’’ 

Then you are very unhappy ? ’’ asked the priest, after a 
silence. 

I am very cold,” she replied. 

She took her feet in her hands, a gesture habituai with un- 
happy wretches who a^e cold, as we hâve already seen in the 
case of the recluse of the Tour-Koland, and her teeth chattered. 

The priest appeared to cast his eyes around the dungeon 
from beneath his cowl. 

Without light ! without lire ! in the water ! it is horrible ! ’’ 

Yes,” she replied, with the bewildered air which unhappi- 
ness had given her. The day belongs to every one, why do 
they give me only night ? ’’ 

Do you know,’’ resumed the priest, after a fresh silence, 

why you are here ? 

I thought I knew once,” she said, passing her thin fingers 
over her eyelids, as though to aid her memory, but I know 
no longer.” 

Ail at once she began to weep like a child. 

I should like to get away from here, sir. I am cold, I am 
afraid, and there are créatures which crawl over my body.” 

“Well, follow me.” 

So saying, the priest took her arm. The unhappy girl was 
frozen to her very soûl. Yet that hand produced an impres- 
sion of cold upon her. 

Oh ! ” she murmured, Tis the icy hand of death. Who 
are you ? ” 


LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA. 


101 


The priest threw back his cowl ; she looked. It was the 
sinister visage which had so long pursued her ; that demon’s 
head which had appeared at la Falourdel’s, above the head of 
lier adored Phœbus ; that eye which she last had seen glitter- 
ing beside a dagger. 

Tins apparition, always so fatal for her, and which had thus 
driven her on from misfortune to misfortune, even to torture, 
roused her from her stupor. It seeined to lier that the sort of 
veil which had lain thick upon her memory was rent away. 
AU the details of her melancholy adveiiture, from the noctur- 
nal scene at la Falourdehs to her condemnation to the Tour- 
nelle, recurred to her memory, no longer vague and confused 
as heretofore, but distinct, harsh, clear, palpitating, terrible. 
These souvenirs, half effaced and almost obliterated by 
excess of suffering, were revived by the sombre figure which 
stood before her, as the approach of lire causes letters traced 
upon white paper with invisible ink, to start out perfectly 
fresh. It seemed to her that ail the wounds of her heart 
opened and bled simultaneously. 

“ Hall ! ” she cried, with her hands on her eyes, and a convul- 
sive trembling, ‘‘ ’tis the priest ! ” 

Then she dropped her arms in discouragement, and remained 
seated, with lowered head, eyes fixed on the ground, mute and 
still trembling. 

The priest gazed at her with the eye of a hawk which has 
long been soaring in a circle from the heights of heaven over a 
poor lark cowering in the wheat, and has long been silently 
contracting the formidable circles of his flight, and has sud- 
denly swooped down upon his prey like a flash of lightning, 
and holds it panting in his talons. 

She began to murinur in a low voice, — 

Finish ! finish ! the last blow ! ’’ and she drew her head 
down in terror between her shoulders, like the lamb awaiting 
the blow of the butcher’s axe. 

So I inspire you with horror ? he said at length. 

She Iliade no reply. 

Do I inspire you with horror ? ” he repeated. 

Her lips contracted, as though with a smile. 


102 


NOTBE-BAME. 


said she, headsman scoffs at the condemned. 
Here he has been pursuing me^ tbreatening me, terrifying me 
for montbs ! Had it not been for bim, my God, how bappy I 
sbould bave been ! It was be wbo cast me into tbis abyss ! 
Ob beavens ! it was be wbo killed bim ! my Pbœbus ! 

Here, bursting into sobs, and raising ber eyes to tbe priest , — 
Ob ! wretcb, wbo are you ? Wbat bave I done to you ? 
Do y ou tben, bâte me so ? Alas ! wbat bave youagainst me ? ’’ 
1 love tbee ! ” cried tbe priest. 

Her tears suddenly ceased, sbe gazed at bim witb tbe look 
of an idiot. He bad fallen on bis knees and was devouring 
ber witb eyes of flame. 

‘‘ Dost tbou understand ? I love tbee ! ” be cried again. 

“ Wbat love ! ’’ said tbe unbappy girl witb a sbudder. 

He resumed, — 

Tbe love of a damned soûl.” 

Botb remained silent for several minutes, crusbed beneatb 
tbe weigbt of tbeir émotions ; be maddened, sbe stupefied. 

“Listen,” said tbe priest at last, and a singular calm bad 
corne over bim ; you sball know ail I ain about to tell you 
tbat wbicb I bave bitberto bardly dared to say to myself, 
wben furtively interrogating my conscience at tbose deep 
bours of tbe nigbt wben it is so dark tbat it seems as tbougb 
God no longer saw us. Listen. Before I knew you, young 
girl, I was bappy.” 

So was I ! ” sbe sigbed feebly. 

^^Do not interrupt me. Yes, I was bappy, at least I be- 
lieved myself to be so. I was pure, my soûl was filled witb 
limpid ligbt. No bead was raised more proudly and more 
radiantly tban mine. Priests consulted me on cbastity ; doc- 
tors, on doctrines. Yes, science was ail in ail to me ; it was a 
sister to me, and a sister sufficed. Not but tbat witb âge 
otber ideas came to me. More tban once my flesb bad been 
moved as a woman’s form passed by. Tbat force of sex and 
blood wbicb, in tbe madness of youtb, I bad imagined tbat I 
bad stifled forever bad, more tban once, convulsively raised 
tbe cbain of iron vows wbicb bind me, a misérable wretcb, to 
tbe cold stones of tbe altar. But fasting, prayer, study, tbe 


LASCIATE OGNI SPEEANZA. 


103 


mortifications of the cloister, rendered my soûl mistress of 
my body once more, and tben I avoided women. Moreover, I 
bad but to open a book, and ail the impure mists of my brain 
vanished before the splendors of science. In a few moments, 
I felt the gross things of earth flee far away, and I found 
myself once more calm, quieted, and serene, in the presence of 
the tranquil radiance of eternal truth. As long as the démon 
sent to attack me only vague shadows of women who passed 
occasionally before my eyes in church, in the streets, in the 
fields, and who hardly recurred to my dreams, I easily van- 
quished him. Alas ! if the victory has not remained with me, 
it is the fault of God, who has not created man and the 
démon of equal force. Listen. One day — ” 

Here the priest paused, and the prisoner heard sighs of 
anguish break from his breast with a Sound of the death 
rattle. 

He resumed, — 

One day I was leaning on the window of my cell. What 
book was I reading then ? Oh ! ail that is a whirlwind in my 
head. I was reading. The window opened upon a Square. I 
heard a Sound of tambourine and music. Annoyed at being 
thus disturbed in my revery, I glanced into the Square. What 
I beheld, others saw beside myself, and yet it was not a spec- 
tacle made for human eyes. There, in the middle of the 
pavement, — it was midday, the sun was shining brightly, — a 
créature was dancing. A créature so beautiful that God 
would hâve preferred her to the Virgin and hâve chosen her 
for his mother and hâve wished to be born of her if she had 
been in existence when he was made man ! Her eyes were 
black and splendid; in the midst of her black locks, some 
hairs through which the sun shone glistened like threads 
of gold. Her feet disappeared in their movements like the 
spokes of a rapidly turning wheel. Around her head, in her 
black tresses, there were disks of métal, which glittered in 
the sun, and formed a coronet of stars on her brow. Her 
dress thick set with spangles, blue, and dotted with a thou- 
sand sparks, gleamed like a summer night. Her brown, 
supple arms twined and untwined around her waist, like two 


104 


NOTRE-DAME. 


scarfs. The form of her body was surprisingly beautiful. 
Oh! what a resplendent figure stood out, like something 
luminous even in the sunlight ! Alas, young girl, it was thou ! 
Surprised, intoxicated, charmed, I allowed myself to gaze 
upon thee. I looked so long that I suddenly shuddered with 
terror ; I felt that fate was seizing hold of me.’’ 

The priest paused for a moment, overcome with émotion. 
Then he continued, — 

Already half fascinated, I tried to cling fast to something 
and hold myself back from falling. I recalled the snares which 
Satan had already set for me. The créature before my eyes 
possessed that superhuman beauty which can corne only from 
heaven or hell. It was no simple girl made with a little of 
our earth, and dimly lighted within by the vacillating ray of 
a woman’s soûl. It was an angel ! but of shadows and flame, 
and not of light. At the moment when I was meditating 
thus, I beheld beside you a goat, a beast of witches, which 
smiled as it gazed at me. The midday sun gave him golden 
horns. Then I perceived the snare of the démon, and I no 
longer doubted that you had corne from hell and that you had 
corne thence for my perdition. I believed it.” 

Here the priest looked the prisoner full in the face, and 
added, coldly, — 

I believe it still. Nevertheless, the charm operated little 
by little ; y our dancing whirled through my brain ; I felt the 
mysterious spell working within me. Ail that should hâve 
awakened was lulled to sleep ; and like those who die in the 
snow, I felt pleasure in allowing this sleep to draw on. Ail 
at once, you began to sing. What could I do, unhappy 
wretch ? Your song was still more charming than y our dan- 
cing. I tried to flee. Impossible. I was nailed, rooted to the 
spot. It seemed to me that the marble of the pavement had 
risen to my knees. I was forced to remain until the end. 
My feet were like ice, my head was on lire. At last you took 
pity on me, you ceased to sing, you disappeared. The reflec- 
tion of the dazzling vision, the réverbération of the enchant- 
ing music disappeared by degrees from my eyes and my ears. 
Then I fell back into the embrasure of the window, more 


LASCIATE OGNl SPERANZA. 


105 


rigid, more feeble than a statue torn from its base. The 
vesper bell roused me. I drew myself up ; I fled ; but alas ! 
something within me had fallen never to rise again, something 
had corne upon me from which I could not flee.’’ 

He made another pause and went on, — 

‘‘Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man 
wliom I did not know. I tried to make use of ail my remé- 
dies. The cloister, the altar, work, books, — follies ! Oh, how 
hollow does science souncî when one in despair dashes against 
it a head full of passions ! Do y ou know, young girl, what I 
saw thenceforth between my book and me? You, your shade, 
the image of the luminous apparition which had one day 
crossed the space before me. But this image had no longer 
the same color ; it was sombre, funereal, gloomy as the black 
circle which long pursues the vision of the imprudent man 
who has gazed intently at the sun. 

Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song hura- 
ming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on 
my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form 
in contact with my own, I desired to see you again, to touch 
you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really 
find you like the idéal image which I had retained of you, to 
shatter my dream, perchance, with reality. At ail events, I 
hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the 
hrst had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you 
once more. Calamity ! When I had seen you twice, Lwanted 
to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. 
Then — how stop myself on that slope of hell ? — then I no 
longer belonged to myself. The other end of the thread 
which the démon had attached to my wings he had fastened 
to his foot. I became vagrant and wandering like yourself. 
T waited for you under porches, I stood on the lookout for 
you at the Street corners, I watched for you from the summit 
of my tower. Every evening I returned to myself more 
charmed, more despairing, more bewitched, more lost ! 

had learned who you were; an Egyptian, Bohemian, 
gypsy, zingara. How could I doubt the magic ? Bisten. I 
hoped that a trial would free me from the charm. A witch 


106 


NOTRE-DAME. 


enchanted Bruno d’Ast ; lie had her burned, and was cured. I 
knew it. I wanted to try the remedy. First I tried to hâve 
you forbidden the square in front of Notre-Dame, hoping to 
forget you if you returned no more. You paid no heed to it. 
You returned. Then the idea of abducting you occurred to 
me. One night I made the attempt. There were two of us. 
We already had you in our power, when that misérable olRcer 
came up. He delivered you. Thus did he begin your unhappi- 
ness, mine, and his own. Finally, no longer knowing what to 
do, and what was to become of me, I denounced you to the official. 

“ I thought that I should be cured like Bruno d’Ast. I also 
had a confused idea that a trial would deliver you into my 
hands ; that, as a prisoner I should hold you, I should hâve 
you ; that there you could not escape from me ; that you had 
already possessed me a sufficiently long time to give me the 
right to possess you in my turn. When one does wrong, one 
must do it thoroughly. ’Tis madness to hait midway in the 
monstrous ! The extreme of crime has its deliriums of joy. 
A priest and a witch can mingle in delight upon the truss of 
straw in a dungeon ! 

Accordingly, I denounced you. It was then that I terrified 
you when ive met. The plot which I was weaving against 
you, the storm which I was heaping up above your head, burst 
from me in threats and lightning glances. Still, I hesitated. 
My Project had its terrible sides which made me shrink back. 

Perhaps I might hâve renounced it ; perhaps my hideous 
thought would hâve withered in my brain, without bearing 
fruit. I thought that it would always dépend upon me to 
follow up or discontinue this prosecution. But every evil 
thought is inexorable, and insists on becoming a deed; but 
where I believed myself to be ail powerful, fate was more 
powerful than I. Alas ! Tis fate which has seized you and 
delivered you to the terrible wheels of the machine which I 
had constructed doubly. Listen. I am nearing the end. 

One day, — again the sun was shilling brilliantly — I behold 
a man pass me uttering your name and laughing, who carries 
sensuality in his eyes. Damnation ! I followed him j you 
know the rest.’^ 


LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA. 


107 


He ceased. 

The young girl could find but one word ; 

Oh, my Phœbus ! ” 

^^Not that name ! said the priest, grasping her arm 
violently. “ Utter not that naine ! Oh ! misérable wretches 
that we are, Tis that naine which has ruined us ! or, rather 
we hâve ruined each other by the inexplicable, play of fate ! 
you are suffering, are you not ? you are cold ; the night makes 
you blind, the dungeon envelops you; but perhaps you still 
hâve some light in the bottom of your soûl, were it only your 
childish love for that empty man who played with your heart, 
while I bear the dungeon within me ; within me there is 
winter, ice, despair ; I hâve night in my soûl. 

Do you know what I hâve suffered ? I was présent at your 
trial. I was seated on the official’s bench. Yes, under one of 
the priests’ cowls, there were the contortions of the damned. 
When you were brought in, I was there ; when you were ques- 
tioned, I was there. — Den of wolves ! — It was my crime, it 
was my gallows that I beheld being slowly reared over your 
head. I was there for every witness, every proof, every plea ; 
I could count each of your steps in the painful path ; I was 
still there when that ferocious beast — oh ! I had not foreseen 
torture ! Listen. I followed you to that chamber of anguish. 
I beheld you stripped and handled, half naked, by the infa- 
inous hands of the tormentor. I beheld your foot, that foot 
which I would hâve given an empire to kiss and die, that foot, 
beneath which to hâve had my head crushed I should hâve 
felt such rapture, — I beheld it encased in that horrible boot, 
which converts the limbs of a living being into one bloody 
clod. Oh, wretch ! while I looked on at that, I held beneath 
my shroud a dagger, with which I lacerated my breast. When 
3^ou uttered that cry, I plunged it into my flesh ; at a second 
cry, it would hâve entered my heart. Look ! I believe that it 
still bleeds.” 

He opened his cassock. His breast was in fact, mangled as 
by the claw of a tiger, and on his side he had a large and 
badly healed wound. 

The prisoner recoiled with horror. 


108 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Oh ! ’’ said the priest, young girl, hâve pity upon me ! 
You think yourself unhappy ; alas ! alas ! y ou know not what 
unhappiness is. Oh ! to love a woman ! to be a priest ! to be 
hated ! to love with ail the fury of one’s soûl ; to feel that one 
would give for the least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, 
one’s famé, one’s salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this 
life and the other ; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, 
archangel, God, in order that one might place a greater slave 
beneath her feet ; to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams 
and one’s thoughts, and to behold her in love with the trap- 
pings of a soldier ! and to hâve nothing to offer her but a 
priest’s dirty cassock, which will inspire her with fear and 
disgust ! To be présent with one’s jealousy and one’s rage, 
while she lavishes on a misérable, blustering imbécile, treas- 
ures of love and beauty ! To behold that body whose form 
burns you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, 
that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another ! 
Oh heaven ! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think 
of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for 
whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to 
behold ail those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in 
torture ! To hâve succeeded only in stretching her upon the 
leather bed ! Oh ! these are the véritable pincers, reddened 
in the fires of hell. Oh ! blessed is he who is sawn between 
two planks, or torn in pièces by four horses ! Do you know 
what that torture is, which is imposed upon you for long 
nights by your burning arteries, your bursting heart, your 
breaking head, your teeth-knawed hands ; mad tormentors 
which turn you incessantly, as upon a red-hot gridiron, to a 
thought of love, of jealousy, and of despair ! Young girl, 
mercy ! a truce for a moment ! a few ashes on these live 
eoals ! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration which 
trickles in great drops from my brow ! Child ! torture me 
with one hand, but caress me with the other ! Hâve pity, 
young girl ! Hâve pity upon me ! ” 

The priest writhed on the wet pavement, beating his head 
against the corners of the stone steps. The young girl gazed 
at him, and listened to him. 


LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA. 


109 


When he ceased, exhausted and panting, she repeated in a 
low voice, — 

“ Oh mj Phœbus ! ” 

The priest dragged himself towards her on his knees. 

“ I beseech you/’ he cried, if you hâve any heart, do not 
repuise me ! Oh ! I love you ! I am a wretch ! When you 
utter that naine, unhappy girl, it is as though you crushed ail 
tne libres of my heart between your teeth. Mercy ! If you 
corne from hell I will go thither with you. I hâve done every- 
thing to that end. The hell where you are, shall be paradise ; 
the sight of you is more charming than that of God ! Oh ! 
speak ! you will hâve none of me ? I should hâve thought 
the mountains would be shaken in their foundations on the 
day when a woman would repuise such a love. Oh ! if you 
only would! Oh ! how happy we might be. We would flee — 
I would help you to flee, — we would go somewhere, we would 
seek that spot on earth, where the sun is brightest, the sky 
the bluest, where the trees are most luxuriant. We would 
love each other, we would pour our two soûls into each other, 
and we would hâve a thirst for ourselves which we would 
quench in commun and incessantly at that fountain of inex- 
haustible love.” 

She interrupted with a terrible and thrilling laugh. 

Look, father, you hâve blood on your Angers ! ” 

The priest remained for several moments as though petrifiod, 
with his eyes fixed upon his hand. 

Well, y es ! ” he resumed at last, with strange gentleness, 
“ insult me, scoff at me, overwhelm me with scorn ! but corne, 
corne. Let us make haste. It is to be to-morrow, I tell you. 
The gibbet on the Grève, you know it ? it stands always 
ready. It is horrible ! to see you ride in that tumbrel ! Oh ! 
mercy ! Until now I hâve never felt the power of my love 
for you. — Oh ! follow me. You shall take your time to love 
me after I hâve saved you. You shall hâte me as long as you 
will. But corne. To-morrow ! to-morrow ! the gallows ! your 
execution ! Oh ! save yourself ! spare me ! ” 

He seized her arm, he was beside himself, he tried to drag 
her away. 


110 


NOTRE-DAME, 


She fixed her eye intently on him. 

“ What has become of my Phœbus ? 

Ah ! ” said the priest, releasing her arm, yon are pitiless.’’ 

What has become of Phœbus ? ” she repeated coldly. 

He is dead ! cried the priest. 

Dead ! ’’ said she, still icy and motionless ; then why do 
yon talk to me of living ? ” 

He was not listening to her. 

“ Oh ! yes,’^ said he, as though speaking to himself, he cer- 
tainly must be dead. The blade pierced deeply. I believe I 
touched his heart with the point. Oh ! my very soûl was at 
the end of the dagger ! ” 

The young girl flung herself upon him like a raging tigress, 
and pushed him upon the steps of the staircase with super- 
natural force. 

Begone, monster ! Begone, assassin ! Leave me to die ! 
May the blood of both of us make an eternal stain upon your 
brow ! Be thine, priest ! Ne ver ! ne ver ! Nothing shall unité 
us ! not hell itself ! Go, accursed man ! never ! ’’ 

The priest h ad stumbled on the stairs. He silently disen- 
tangled his feet from the folds of his robe, picked up his lan- 
tern again, and slowly began the ascent of the steps which led 
to the door ; he opened the door and passed through it. 

Ail at once, the young girl beheld his head reappear ; it wore 
a frightful expression, and he cried, hoarse with rage and 
despair, — 

I tell you he is dead ! ” 

She fell face downwards upon the floor, and there was no 
longer any Sound audible in the cell than the sob of the drop 
of water which made the pool palpitate amid the darkness. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MOTHER. 

I DO not believe that tliere is anything sweeter in the world 
tlian tlie ideas wbich awake in a moclier’s heart at the sight 
of her child’s tiny shoe ; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, 
for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very 
sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That 
shoe has so much grâce and daintiness, it is so impossible for 
it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her 
child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, 'she talks to it ; she 
asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny ; and 
if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the 
sweet and fragile créature before hereyes. She thinks she 
sees it, she does see it, complété, living, joyous, with its déli- 
cate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose 
white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the 
carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the 
mother trembles lest it should approach the tire. If it is sum- 
mer tinie, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the 
grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big 
dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with 
the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds 
sand in the flower-beds and earth in the paths. Everything 
laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath of 
air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting 

111 



112 


NOTUE-BAME, 


among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows ail this 
to the mother, and makes her heart melt as lire melts wax. 

But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, 
of charms, of tenderness, which throng around the little shoe, 
become so many horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe 
is no longer anything but an instrument of torture which 
eternally crushes the heart of the mother. It is always the 
saine fibre which vibrâtes, the tenderest and most sensitive ; 
but instead of an angel caressing it, it is a démon who is 
wrenching at it. 

One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those 
dark blue skies against which Garofolo loves to place his De- 
scents from the Cross, the recluse of the Tour-Eoland heard a 
Sound of wheels, of horses and irons in the Place de Grève. 
She was somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair upon her 
ears in order to deafen herself, and resumed her contempla- 
tion, on her knees, of the inanimate object which she had 
adored for fifteen years. This little shoe was the universe to 
her, as we hâve already said. Her thought was shut up in it, 
and was destined never more to quit it except at death. The 
sombre cave of the Tour-Boland alone knew how many bitter 
imprécations, touching complaints, prayers and sobs she had 
wafted to heaven in connection with that charming bauble of 
rose-colored satin. Never was more despair bestowed upon a 
prettier and more graceful thing. 

It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more 
violently than usual ; and she could be heard outside lament- 
ing in a loud and monotonous voice which rent the heart. 

Oh my daughter ! she said, my daughter, my poor, dear 
little child, so I shall never see thee more ! It is over ! It 
always seems to me that it happened yesterday ! My God ! 
my God ! it would hâve been better not to give her to me 
than to take her away so soon. Did you not know that our 
children are part of ourselves, and that a mother who has lost 
her child no longer believes in God ? Ah ! wretch that I am 
to hâve gone ont that day ! Lord ! Lord ! to hâve taken her 
from me thus ; you could never hâve looked at me with her, 
when I was joyously warming her at my fire, when she 


THE MOT HER. 


113 


laughed as she suckled, when I made lier tiny feet creep up 
my breast to my lips ? Ob ! if you bad looked at that, my 
God, you would bave taken pity on my joy ; you would not 
bave taken from me tbe only love wbicb lingered in my heart ! 
Was I then, Lord, so misérable a créature, tbat you could not 
look at me bef ore condemning me ? — Alas ! Alas ! bere is tbe 
sboe ; wbere is tbe foot ? wbere is tbe rest ? Wbere is tbe 
cbild ? My daugbter ! my daugbter ! wbat did tbey do witb 
tbee ? Lord, give ber back to me. My knees bave been 
worn for fifteen years in praying to tbee, my God ! Is not 
tbat enougb ? Give ber back to me one day, one hour, one 
minute ; one minute. Lord ! and tben cast me to tbe démon for 
ail eternity ! Ob ! if I only knew wbere tbe skirt of your 
garment trails, I would eling to it witb botb bands, and you 
would be obliged to give me back my cbild ! Hâve you no 
pity on ber pretty little sboe ? Could you condemn a poor 
motber to tbis torture for fifteen years ? Good Virgin ! good 
Virgin of beaven ! my infant Jésus bas been taken from me, 
bas been stolen from me ; tbey devoured ber on a beatb, tbey 
drank ber blood, tbey cracked ber bones ! Good Virgin, bave 
pity upon me. My daugbter, I want my daugbter ! Wbat is 
it to me tbat sbe is in paradise ? I do not want your angel, I 
want my cbild ! I am a lioness, I want my wbelp. Ob ! I will 
writbe on tbe eartb, I will break tbe stones witb my forebead, 
and I will damn niyself, and I will curse you. Lord, if you 
keep my cbild from me ! you see plainly tbat my arms are ail 
bitten. Lord ! Has tbe good God no mercy ? — Ob ! give me 
only sait and black bread, only let me bave my daugbter to 
warm me like a sun ! Alas ! Lord my God. Alas ! Lord my 
God, I am only a vile sinner ; but my daugbter made me pions. 
I was full of religion for tbe love of ber, and I bebeld you 
tbrougb ber smile as tbrougb an opening into beaven. Ob ! 
if I could only once, just once more, a single time, put tbis 
sboe on ber pretty little pink foot, I would die blessing you, 
good Virgin. Ah ! fifteen years ! she will be grown up now ! 
— Unhappy cbild! wbat! it is really true tben I shall never 
see ber more, not even in beaven, for I sball not go there 
myself. Ob ! wbat misery to tbink tbat bere is ber sboe, 
and tbat tbat is ail ! 


114 


NOTBE-DAME. 


The unhappy woman flung herself upon that shoe ; her con- 
solation and her despair for so many years, and her vitals 
were rent with sobs as on the first day ; because, for a inother 
who has lost her child, it is always the first day. That grief 
never grows old. The mourning garments may grow white 
and threadbare, the heart remains dark. 

At that moment, the fresh and j oyons cries of children 
passed in front of the cell. Every time that children crossed 
her vision or struck her ear, the poor mother flung herself into 
the darkest corner of her sepulchre, and one would hâve said, 
that she sought to plunge her head into the stone in order not 
to hear them. This time, on the contrary, she drew herself 
npright with a start, and listened eagerly. One of the little 
boys had just said, — 

They are going to hang a gypsy to-day.’’ 

With the abrupt leap of that spider which we hâve seen 
fling itself upon a fly at the trembling of its web, she rushed 
to her air-hole, which opened as the reader knows, on the 
Place de Grève. A ladder had, in fact, been raised up against 
the permanent gibbet, and the hangman’s assistant was busy- 
ing himself with adjusting the chains which had been rusted 
by the rain. There were some people standing about. 

The laughing group of children was already far aivay. The 
sacked nun sought with her eyes some passer-by whom she 
might question. Ail at once, beside her cell, she perceived a 
priest making a pretext of reading the public breviary, but 
who was much less occupied with the ^Oectern of latticed 
iron,’’ than with the gallows, toward which he cast a fierce 
and gloomy glance from time to time. She recognized mon- 
sieur the archdeacon of dosas, a holy man. 

Father,” she inquired, whom are they about to hang 
yonder ? ’’ 

The priest looked at her and made no reply ; she repeated 
her question. Then he said, — 

I know not.” 

^^Some children said that it was a gypsy,” went on the 
recluse. 

I believe so,” said the priest. 


THE MOTHEB. 115 

Then Paquette la Chantefleurie burst into hyena-like 
laughter. 

Sister/’ said the archdeacon, “ do you then hâte the gyp- 
sies h^artily ? ” 

“ Do I hâte the/n ! ” exclaimed the recluse, ‘‘ they are vam- 
pires, stealers of children ! They devoured my little daugh- 
ter, my child, my only child! I hâve no longer any heart, 
they devoured it ! ’’ 

She was frightful. The priest looked at lier coldly. 

‘‘ There is one in particular whom I hâte, and whoni I hâve 
cursed,’^ she resumed ; it is a young one, of the âge which 
my daughter would be if her mother had not eaten my daugh- 
ter. Every time that that young viper passes in front of my 
cell, she sets my blood in a ferment.’’ 

Well, sister, rejoice,” said the priest, icy as a sepulchral 
statue ; ^^that is the one whom you are about to see die.” 

His head fell upon his bosom and he moved slowly away. 

The recluse writhed her anus with joy. 

“1 predicted it for her, that she would ascend thither! 
Thanks, priest ! ” she cried. 

And she began to pace up and down with long strides 
before the grating of her window, her hair dishevelled, her 
eyes flashing, with her shoulder striking against the wall, 
with the wild air of a female wolf in a cage, who has long 
been famished, and who feels the hour for her repast drawing 
near. 




CHAPTER VI. 

THREE HUMAN HEARTS DIFFERENTLY CONSTRUCTED. 

Phoebus was not dead, liowever. Men of that stamp die 
hard. AVheii Master Philippe Lheulier, advocate extraordi- 
iiary of the king, had said to poor Esmeralda ; “ He is dying/’ 
it was an error or a jest. When the archdeacon had repeated 
to the condemned girl ; He is dead/’ the fact is that he 
knew nothing abont it, but that he believed it, that he 
connted on it, that he did not doubt it, that he devoutly 
hoped it. It would hâve been too hard for him to give 
favorable news of his rival to the woman whom he loved. 
Any man would hâve done the same in his place. 

It was not that Phœbus’s wound had not been serions, but 
it had not been as inuch so as the archdeacon believed. The 
physician, to whom the soldiers of the watch had carried him 
at the first moment, had feared for his life dnring the space 
of a week, and had even told him so in Latin. But youth 
had gained the upper hand ; and, as frequently happens, in 
spite of prognostications and diagnoses, nature had amused 
herself by saving the sick man under the physician’s very 
nose. It was while he was still lying on the leech’s pallet 
that he had submitted to the interrogations of Philippe Lheu- 
lier and the official inquisitors, which had annoyed him 
greatly. Hence, one fine morning, feeling himself better, 

116 


THREE UUMAN HEARTS. 


117 

he had left Ms golden spurs with the leech as payment, and 
had slipped away. This had not, however, interfered with 
the progress of the affair. Justice, at that epoch, troubled 
itself very little about the clearness and definiteness of a 
criminal suit. Provided that the accused was hung, that was 
ail that was necessary. Now the judge had plenty of proofs 
against la Esmeralda. They had supposed Phœbus to be 
dead, and that was the end of the matter. 

Phœbus, on his side, had not fled far. He had simply 
rejoined his company in garrison at Queue-en-Brie, in the 
Isle-de-Prance, a few stages froni Paris. 

After ail, it did not please hiin in the least to appear in 
this suit. He had a vague feeling that he should play a 
ridiculous figure in it. On the whole, he did not know 
what to think of the whole affair. Superstitions, and not 
given to devoutness, like every soldier who is only a soldier, 
when he came to question himself about this adventure, he 
did not feel assured as to the goat, as to the singular fashion 
in which he had met La Esmeralda, as to the no less strange 
manner in which she had allowed him to divine her love, as 
to her character as a gypsy, and lastly, as to the surly monk. 
He perceived in ail these incidents much more magic than 
love, probably a sorceress, perhaps the devil ; a comedy, in 
short, or to speak in the language of that day, a very disa- 
greeable mystery, in which he played a very awkward part, 
the rôl6 of blows and dérision. The captain was quite put 
ont of countenance about it ; he experienced that sort of 
shame which our La Fontaine has so admirably defined, — 

Ashamed as a fox who has been caught by a fowl. 

Moreover, he hoped that the affair would not get noised 
abroad, that his name would hardly be pronounced in it, 
and that in any case it would not go beyond the courts of the 
Tournelle. In this he was not mistaken, there was then no 
Gazette des Tribunaux; and as not a week passed which had 
not its counterfeiter to boil, or its witch to hang, or its here- 
tic to burn, at some one of the innumerable justices of Paris, 


118 


NOTRE-DAME. 


people were so accustomed to seeing in ail the squares tlie 
ancient feudal ïhemis, bare armed, with sleeves stripped up, 
performing ber duty at the gibbets, the ladders, and the pillo- 
ries, that they hardly paid any heed to it. Fashionable 
society of that day hardly knew the name of the victini who 
passed by at the corner of the Street, and it was the populace 
at the most who regaled themselves with this coarse fare. An 
execution was an habituai incident of the public highways, 
like the braising-pan of the baker or the slaughter-house of 
the knacker. The executioner was only a sort of butcher of 
a little deeper dye than the rest. 

Hence Phoebus’s mind was soon at ease on the score of the 
enchantress Esmeralda, or Similar, as he called her, concern- 
ing the blow from the dagger of the Bohemian or of the surly 
monk (it mattered little which to him), and as to the issue of 
the trial. But as soon as his heart was vacant in that direc- 
tion, Fleur-de-Lys returned to it. Captain Phœbus’s heart, 
like the physics of that day, abhorred a vacuum. 

Queue-en-Brie was a very insipid place to stay at then, a 
village of farriers, and cow-girls with chapped hands, a long 
line of poor dwellings and thatched cottages, which borders 
the grand road on both sides for half a league ; a tail (queue), 
in short, as its name imports. 

Pleur-de-Lys was his last passion but one, a pretty girl, a 
charrning dowry; accordingly, one fine morning, quite cured, 
and assuming that, after the lapse of two months, the Bohe- 
mian affair must be completely finished and forgotten, the 
amorous cavalier arrived on a prancing horse at the door of 
the Gondelaurier mansion. 

He paid no attention to a tolerably numerous rabble which 
had assembled in the Place du Parvis, before the portai of 
Notre-Dame; he remembered that it was the month of May ; 
he supposed that it was some procession, some Pentecost, some 
festival, hitched his horse to the ring at the door, and gayly 
ascended the stairs to his beautiful betrothed. 

She was alone with her mother. 

The scene of the witch, her goat, her cursed alphabet, and 
Phœbus’s long absences, still weighed on Pleur-de-Lys’s heart. 


THEEE HUM AN HEAETS. 


119 


Nevertheless, when slie belield. her captain enter, slie thought 
him so handsome, his doublet so new, his baldrick so shining, 
and his air so impassioned, that she blushed with pleasure. 
The noble damsel herself was more charming than ever. Her 
magnificent blond hair was plaited in a ravishing manner, she 
was dressed entirely in that sky bliie which becomes fair 
people so well, a bit of coquetry which she had learned froin 
Colombe, and her eyes were swimming in that languor of love 
which becomes them still better. 

Phoebus, who had seen nothing in the line of beauty, since 
he left the village maids of Queue-en-Brie, was intoxicated 
with Fleur-de-Lys, which imparted to our officer so eager and 
gallant an air, that his peace was immediately made. Madame 
de Gondelaurier herself, still maternally seated in her big arm- 
chair, had not the heart to scold him. As for Fleur-de-Lys’s 
reproaches, they expired in tender cooings. 

The yoiing girl was seated near the window still embroider- 
ing her grotto of Neptune. The captain was leaning over the 
back of her chair, and she was addressing her caressing re- 
proaches to him in a low voice. 

What has become of you these two long months, wicked 
man ? ” 

I swear to you,’’’ replied Phoebus, somewhat embarrassed 
by the question, that you are beautiful enough to set an arch- 
bishop to dreaming.” 

She could not repress a smile. 

Good, good, sir. Let my beauty alone and answer my 
question. A fine beauty, in sooth ! ” 

“ Well, my dear cousin, I was recalled to the garrison.” 

And where is that, if you please ? and why did not you 
corne to say farewell ? 

At Queue-en-Brie.’’ 

Phœbus was delighted with the first question, which helped 
him to avoid the second. 

But that is quite close by, monsieur. Why did you not 
corne to see me a single time ? ” 

Here Phœbus was rather seriously embarrassed. 

^^Because — the service — and then, charming cousin, I 
hâve been ill.” 


120 


NOTRE-DAME. 


111 ! ” she repeated in alarm. 

Yes, wounded ! ” 

^^Wounded!” 

She poor child was completely upset. 

Oh ! do not be frightened at that/’ said Phœbus, carelessly, 

it was nothing. A quarrel, a sword eut ; what is that to 
you ? ” 

What is that to me ? ” exclaimed Fleur-de-Lys, raising her 
beautiful eyes filled with tears. ‘‘ Oh ! you do not say what 
you think when you speak thus. What sword eut was that ? 
I wish to know ail/’ 

“ Well, my dear fair one, I had a falling out with Mahè Fédy, 
you know ? the lieutenant of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and we 
ripped open a few inehes of skin for eaeh other. That is ail.” 

The mendaeious eaptain was perfeetly well aware that an 
affair of honor always makes a man stand well in the eyes of a 
woman. Tn faet, Fleur-de-Lys looked him full in the faee, ail 
agitated with fear, pleasure, and admiration. Still, she was 
not eompletely reassured. 

“ Provided that you are wholly eured, my Phœbus ! ” said 
she. “ I do not know your Mahè Fédy, but he is a villanous 
man. And whenee arose this quarrel ? ” 

Here Phœbus, whose imagination was endowed with but 
medioere power of ereation, began to find himself in a quan- 
dary as to a means of extrieating himself for his prowess. 

Oh ! how do I know ? — a mere nothing, a horse, a remark ! 
Fair eousin,” he exelaimed, for the sake of ehanging the eon- 
versation, what noise is this in the Cathédral Square ? ” 

He approaehed the window. 

‘‘ Oh ! Mon Dieu, fair eousin, how many people there are on 
the Plaee ! ” 

I know not,” said Fleur-de-Lys ; “ it appears that a witeh 
is to do penanee this morning before the ehureh, and there- 
after to be hung.” 

The eaptain was sothoroughly persuaded thatlaEsmeralda’s 
affair was eoneluded, that he was but little disturbed by Fleur- 
de-Lys’s words. Still, he asked her one or two questions. 

What is the name of this witeh ? ” 


THREE HITMAN HEARTS, 


121 


“ I do not know/’ she replied. 

And what is she said to hâve done ? ” 

She shrugged her white shoulders. 

“ I know not.’’ 

^^Oh, mon Dieu Jésus said her mother; ^^there are so 
many witches nowadays that I dare say they burn them with- 
out knowing their names. One might as well seek the name 
of every cloud in the sky. After ail, one may be tranquil. 
The good God keeps his register.” Here the venerable dame 
rose and came to the window. “ Good Lord ! you are right, 
Phœbus,” said she. “ The rabble is indeed great. There are 
people on ail the roofs, blessed be God! Do you know, 
Phœbus, this reminds me of my best days. The entrance of 
King Charles VII., when, also, there were many people. I no 
longer remember in what year that was. When I speak of this 
to you, it produces upon you the effect, — does it not ? — the 
effect of something very old, and upon me of something very 
young. Oh ! the crowd was far finer than at the présent day. 
They even stood upon the machicolations of the Porte Sainte- 
Antoine. The king had the queen on a pillion, and after 
their highnesses came ail the ladies mounted behind ail the 
lords. I remember that they laughed loudly, because beside 
Amanyon de Garlande, who was very short of stature, there 
rode the Sire Matefelon, a chevalier of gigantic size, who had 
killed heaps of English. It was very fine. A procession of 
ail the gentlemen of France, with their oriflammes waving 
red before the eye. There were some with pennons and some 
with banners. How can I tell ? the Sire de Calan with a 
pennon ; J ean de Châteaumorant with a banner ; the Sire de 
Courcy with a banner, and a more ample one than any of the 
others except the Duc de Bourbon. Alas ! ’tis a sad thing 
to think that ail that lias existed and exists no longer ! ” 

The two lovers were not listening to the venerable dow- 
ager. Phœbus had returned and was leaning on the back of 
his betrothed’s chair, a charming post whence his libertine 
glance plunged into ail the openings of Fleur-de-Lys’s gorget. 
This gorget gaped so conveniently, and allowed him to see so 
many exquisite things and to divine so many more, that 


122 


NOmE-DAME. 


Phœbus, dazzled by tbis skin with its gleams of satin, said 
to himself, ^‘How can any one love anytbing but a fair 
skin ? ” 

Both were silent. The young girl raised sweet, enraptured 
eyes to him from time to time, and their hair mingled in a 
ray of spring sunshine. 

Phœbus/’ said Fleur-de-Lys suddenly, in a low voice, we 
are to be married three months hence ; swear to me that you 
hâve never loved any other woman than myself.” 

“ I swear it, fair angel ! ” replied Phœbus, and his passion- 
ate glances aided the sincere tone of his voice in convincing 
Pleur-de-Lys. 

Meanwhile, the good mother, charmed to see the betrothed 
pair on tenus of such perfect understanding, had just quitted 
the apartment to attend to some domestic matter; Phœbus 
observed it, and this so emboldened the adventurous captain 
that very strange ideas mounted to his brain. Fleur-de-Lys 
loved him, he was lier betrothed ; she was alone with him ; 
his former taste for her had re-awakened, not with ail its fresh- 
ness but with ail its ardor ; after ail, there is no great harm 
in tasting one’s wheat while it is still in the blade ; I do not 
know whether these ideas passed through his mind, but one 
thing is certain, that Fleur-de Lys was suddenly alarmed by 
the expression of his glance. She looked round andr saw that 
her mother was no longer there. 

Good heavens ! ” said she, blushing and uneasy, how 
very warm I am ? ’’ 

I think, in fact,’’ replied Phœbus, that it cannot be far 
from midday. The sun is troublesome. We need only lower 
the curtains.’’ 

“No, no,” exclaimed the poor little thing, “on the contrary, 
I need air.” 

And like a fawn who feels the breath of the pack of 
hounds, she rose, ran to the window, opened it, and rushed 
upon the balcony. 

Phœbus, much discomfited, followed her. 

The Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, upon which the balcony 
looked, as the reader knows, presented at that moment a 


THREE miMAN HEARTS. 123 

singular and sinister spectacle which caused the fright of the 
timid Fleur-de-Lys to change its nature. 

An immense crowd, which overfiowed into ail the neighbor- 
ing streets, encumbered the Place, properly speaking. The 
little Wall, breast high, which surrounded the Place, would 
not hâve sufficed to keep it free had it not been lined with a 
thick hedge of sergeants and hackbuteers, culverines in hand. 
Thanks to this thicket of pikes and arquebuses, the Parvis 
was empty. Its entrance was guarded by a force of halberd- 
iers with the armorial bearings of the bishop. The large 
doors of the church were closed, and formed a contrast with 
the innumerable Windows on the Place, which, open to their 
very gables, allowed a view of thousands of heads heaped up 
almost like the piles of bullets in a park of artillery. 

The surface of this rabble was dingy, dirty, earthy. The 
spectacle which it was expecting was evidently one of the 
sort which possess the privilège of bringing out and calling 
together the vilest among the populace. Nothing is so hide- 
ous as the noise which was made by that swarm of yellow caps 
and dirty heads. In that throng there were more laughs than 
cries, more women than men. 

Proni time to time, a sharp and vibrating voice pierced 
the general clamor. 

Ohé ! Mahiet BalifPre ! Is she to be hung yonder ? ’’ 

Pool ! Pis here that she is to make her apology in her 
shift ! the good God is going to cough Latin in her face ! 
That is always done here, at midday. If ’tis the gallows that 
you wish, go to the Grève.” 

“ I will go there, afterwards.” 

^^Tell me, la Boucanbry ? Is it true that she lias refused a 
confesser ? ” 

It appears so, La Bechaigne.” 

You see what a pagan she is ! ” 

’Tis the custom, monsieur. The bailiff of the courts is 
bound to deliver the malefactor ready judged for execution, if 


124 


NOTRE-DAMK. 


he be a layman, to the provost of Paris; if a clerk, to tbe 
official of the bishopric.’^ 

Thank y ou, sir/’ 

Oh, God ! ” said Pleur-de-Lys, the poor créature ! ” 
ïhis thought filled with sadiiess the glance which she cast 
upon the populace. The captain, much more occupied with 
lier than with that pack of the rabble, was amorously rump- 
ling lier girdle behind. She turned round, entreating and 
smiling. 

Please let me alone, Phœbus ! If my mother were to re- 
turn, she would see your hand ! ” 

At that moment, midday rang slowly ont from the dock of 
Notre-Dame. A murmur of satisfaction broke ont in the 
crowd. The last vibration of the twelfth stroke had hardly 
died away when ail heads surged like the waves beneath a 
squall, and an immense shout went up from the pavement, 
the Windows, and the roofs, — 

“ There she is ! ” 

Pleur-de-Lys pressed her hands to lier eyes, that she might 
not see. 

Charming girl,” said Phœbus, do you wish to with- 
draw ? ” 

‘‘No,” she replied; and she opened through curiosity, the 
eyes which she had closed through fear. 

A tumbrel drawn by a stout Norman horse, and ail sur- 
rounded by cavalry in violet livery with white crosses, had 
just debouched upon the Place through the Pue Saint-Pierre- 
aux-Bœufs. The sergeants of the watch were clearing a pas- 
sage for it through the crowd, by stout blows from their clubs. 
Beside the cart rode several officers of justice and police, rec- 
ognizable by their black costume and their awkwardness in 
the saddle. Master Jacques Charmolue paraded at their head. 

In the fatal cart sat a young girl with her arms tied behind 
her back, and with no priest beside her. She was in her shift ; 
her long black hair (the fashion then was to eut it off only at 
the foot of the gallows) fell in disorder upon her half-bared 
throat and shoulders. 


THBEE HUM AK HE ARTS. 


125 


Athwart that waving hair, more glossy than the plumage of 
a raven, a thick, rough, gray rope was visible, twisted and 
knotted, chafing her délicate collar-bones and twining round 
the charming neck of the poor girl, like an earthworm round 
a flower. Beneath that rope glittered a tiny amulet orna- 
mented with bits of green glass, which had been left to her no 
doubt, because nothing is refused to those who are about to 
die. The spectators in the Windows could see in the bottom 
of the cart her naked legs which she strove to hide beneath 
her, as by a final féminine instinct. At her feet lay a little 
goat, bound. The condemned girl held together with her 
teeth her imperfectly fastened shift. One would hâve said 
that she suffered still more in her misery from being thus 
• exposed almost naked to the eyes of ail. Alas ! modesty is 
not made for such shocks. 

“Jésus ! ’’ said Fleur-de-Lys hastily to the captain. “Look 
fair cousin, Tis that wretched Bohemian with the goat.” 

So saying, she turned to Phœbus. His eyes were fixed on 
the tumbrel. He was very pale. 

“ What Bohemian with the goat ? ” he stammered. 

“ What ! ” resumed Fleur-de-Lys, “ do you not remember ? ” 

Phœbus interrupted her. 

“ I do not know what you mean.” 

He made a step to re-enter the room, but Fleur-de-Lys, 
whose jealousy, previously so vividly aroused by this saine 
gypsy, had just been re-awakened, Fleur-de-Lys gave him a 
look full of pénétration and distrust. She vaguely recalled at 
that moment having heard of a captain mixed up in the trial 
of that witch. 

“ What is the matter with you ? ” she said to Phœbus, “ one 
would say, that this woman had disturbed you.” 

Phœbus forced a sneer, — 

“Me ! Not the least in the world ! Ah ! y es, certainly ! ” 

“ Eemain, then ! ” she continued imperiously, “ and let us 
see the end.” 

The unlucky captain was obliged to remain. He was some- 
what reassured by the fact that the condemned girl never re- 
moved her eyes from the bottom of the cart. It was but too 


126 


NOTUE-DAME. 


surely la Esmeralda. In this last stage of opprobrium and 
misfortune, she was still beautiful ; ber great black eyes ap- 
peared still larger, because of the émaciation of ber cbeeks ; 
ber pale profile was pure and sublime. Sbe resembled wbat 
she had been, in the same degree that a virgin by Masaccio, 
resembles a virgin of Eaphael, — weaker, tbinner, more déli- 
cate. 

Moreover, there was nothing in ber whicb was not shaken 
in some sort, and wbich with the exception of ber modesty, 
she did not let go at will, so profoundly had she been broken 
by stupor and despair. Her body bounded at every jolt of 
the tumbrel like a dead or broken thing ; ber gaze was dull and 
imbécile. A tear was still visible in her eyes, but motionless 
and frozen, so to speak. 

Meanwbile, the lugubrious cavalcade bas traversed the crowd 
amid cries of joy and curions attitudes. But as a faitbful his- 
torian, we must State that on bebolding her so beautiful, so 
depressed, many were moved with pity, even among the hard- 
est of them. 

The tumbrel had entered the Parvis. 

It halted before the central portai. The escort ranged 
themselves in line on both sides. The crowd became silent, 
and, in the midst of this silence full of anxiety and solemnity, 
the two leaves of the grand door swung back, as of them- 
selves, on their hinges, which gave a creak like the Sound of 
a fife. Then there became visible in ail its length, the deep, 
gloomy church, hung in black, sparely lighted with a few can- 
dies gleaming afar off on the principal altar, opened in the 
midst of the Place which was dazzling with light, like the 
mouth of a cavern. At the very extremity, in the gloom of 
the apse, a gigantic silver cross was visible against a black 
drapery which hung from the vault to the pavement. The 
whole nave was deserted. But a few heads of priests could 
be seen moving confusedly in the distant choir stalls, and, at 
the moment when the great door opened, there escaped from 
the church a loud, solemn, and monotonous chanting, which 
cast over the head of the condemned girl, in gusts, fragments 
of melancholy psalms, — 


THREE HUMAN HEARTS. 127 

Non timeho mîllia populi circumdantis me : exsurge, Dom- 
ine ; salvum me fac, Deus ! ’’ 

“ Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aquæ usque ad 
(inimam meam. 

“ Infixus sum in limo profundi / et non est suhstantiaP 

At the same timé, another voice, separate from the choir, 
intoned upon the steps of the chief altar, this melancholy 
offertory, — 

“ Qui verhum meum audit, et crédit ei qui misit me, hahet 
vitam œternam et in judicium non venit ; sed transit a morte 
in vitam P * 

This chant, which a few old men buried in the gloom sang 
from afar over that beautiful créature, full of youth and life, 
caressed by the warm air of spring, inundated with sunlight, 
was the mass for the dead. 

The people listened devoutly. 

The unhappy girl seemed to lose her sight and her con- 
sciousness in the obscure interior of the church. Her white 
lips moved as though in prayer, and the headsman’s assistant 
who approached to assist her to alight from the cart, heard 
her repeating this word in a low tone, — Phœbus.^’ 

They untied her hands, made her alight, accompanied by her 
goat, which had also been unbound, and which bleated with 
joy at hnding itself free : and they made her walk barefoot on 
the hard pavement to the foot of the steps leading to the door. 
The rope about her neck trailed behind her, One would hâve 
said it was a serpent following her. 

Then the chanting in the church ceased. A great golden 
cross and a row of wax candies began to move through the 
gloom. The halberds of the motley beadles clanked ; and, a 
few moments later, a long procession of priests in chasubles, 
and deacons in dalmatics, marched gravely towards the con- 
demned girl, as they drawled their song, spread out before her 
view and that of the crowd. But her glance rested on the one 
who marched at the head, immediately after the cross-bearer. 

* “ He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath 
eternal life, and hath not corne into condemnation; but is passed from 
death to life.” 


128 


nothe-bamk 


Oh ! she said in a low voice, and with a shndder, ’tis 
he again ! the priest ! ” 

It was in fact, the archdeacon. On his left he had the sub- 
chanteiy on his right, the chanter, armed with his official 
wand. He advanced with head thrown back, his ejes fixed 
and wide open, intoning in a strong voice, — 

De ventre inferi clamavi, et exaudisti vocem meam. 

Et projecisti me in profundum in corde maris ^ et fiumen cir- 
cumdedit me.” * 

At the moment when he made his appearance in the full 
daylight beneath the lofty arched portai, enveloped in an 
ample cope of silver barred with a black cross, he was so pale 
that more than one person in the crowd thonght that one of 
the marble bishops who knelt on the sepulchral stones of the 
choir had risen and was corne to receive upon the brink of 
the tomb, the woman who was about to die. 

She, no less pale, no less like a statue, had hardly noticed 
that they had placed in her hand a heavy, lighted candie of 
yellow wax j she had not heard the yelping voice of the clerk 
reading the fatal contents of the apology ; when they told her 
to respond with Amen, she responded Amen. She only recov- 
ered life and force when she beheld the priest make a sign 
to her guards to withdraw, and himself advance alone towards 
her. 

Then she felt her blood boil in her head, and a remnant of 
indignation flashed up in that soûl already benumbed and cold. 

The archdeacon approached her slowly ; even in that ex- 
tremity, she beheld him cast an eye sparkling with sensuality, 
jealousy, and desire, over her exposed form. Then he said 
aloud, — 

“Young girl, hâve y ou asked God’s pardon for your faults 
and shortcomings ? ” 

He bent down to her ear, and added (the spectators sup- 
posed that he was receiving her last confession) : Will y ou 

hâve me ? I can still save you ! ” 

* “ Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. For 
thou hadst cast me into the deep in the midst of the seas, and the floods 
compassed me about.” 


THBEE nUMAN HE ARTS. 129 

She looked intently at him : Begone, démon, or I will 

denounce you ! ” 

He gave vent to a horrible smile: “You will not be be- 
lieved. You will only add a scandai to a crime. Eeply 
quickly ! Will you hâve me ? ” 

“ What hâve you done with my Phœbus ? ” 

“ He is dead ! ’’ said the priest. 

At that moment the wretched archdeacon raised his head 
mechanically and beheld at the other end of the Place, in the 
balcony of the Gondelaurier mansion, the captain standing 
beside Fleur-de-Lys. He staggered, passed his hand across 
his eyes, looked again, muttered a curse, and ail his featur/3s 
were violently contorted. 

“ Well, die then he hissed between his teeth. “No one 
shall hâve you.’’ Then, raising his hand over the gypsy, he 
exclaimed in a funereal voice : — “ / nunc, anima anceps, et 
sit tibi Deus misericors !” * 

This was the dread formula with which it was the custom 
to conclude these gloomy ceremonies. It was the signal 
agreed upon between the priest and the executioner. 

The crowd knelt. 

“ Kyrie eleison” f said the priests, who had remained be- 
neath the arch of the portai. 

“ Kyrie eleison” repeated the throng in that murinur which 
runs over ail heads, like the waves of a troubled sea. 

“ Amen” said the archdeacon. 

He turned his back on the condemned girl, his head sank 
upon his breast once more, he crossed his hands and rejoined 
his escort of priests, and a moment later he was seen to dis- 
appear, with the cross, the candies, and the copes, beneath the 
misty arches of the cathédral, and his sonorous voice was 
extinguished by degrees in the choir, as he chanted this verse 
of despair, — 

“ Omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt.” î 

* “ Go now, soûl, trembling in the balance, and God bave mercy upon 
thee.” 

t “ Lord hâve mercy upon us.” 

J “Ail thy waves and thy billows hâve gone over me.” 


130 


NOTRE-DAME. 


At the same time, the intermittent clasli of the iron butts 
of the beadles’ halberds, gradually dying away araong the col- 
uinns of the nave, produced the effect of a clock hammer 
striking the last hour of the condemned. 

The doors of Notre-Dame remained open, allowing a view 
of the empty desolate church, draped in mourning, without 
candies, and without voices. 

The condemned girl remained motionless in her place, wait- 
ing to be disposed of. One of the sergeants of police was 
obliged to notify Master Charmolue of the fact, as the latter, 
during this entire scene, had been engaged in studying the 
bas-relief of the grand portai which represents, according to 
some, the sacrifice of Abraham ; according to others, the phil- 
osopheras alchemical operation; the sun being figured forth 
by the angel ; the fire, by the fagot ; the artisan, by Abraham. 

There was considérable difficulty in drawing him away from 
that contemplation, but at length he turned round ; and, at a 
signal which he gave, two men clad in yellow, the executioner’s 
assistants, approached the gypsy to bind her hands once more. 

The unhappy créature, at the moment of mounting once 
again the fatal cart, and proceeding to her last halting-place, 
was seized, possibly, with some poignant clinging to life. 
She raised her dry, red eyes to heaven, to the sun, to the 
silvery clouds, eut here and there by a bine trapezium or 
triangle ; then she lowered them to objects around her, to the 
earth, the throng, the houses ; ail at once, while the yellow 
man was binding her elbows, she uttered a terrible cry, a cry 
of joy. Yonder, on that balcony, at the corner of the Place, 
she had just caught sight of him, of her friend, her lord, 
Phœbus, the other apparition of her life ! 

The judge had lied ! the priest had lied ! it was certainly he, 
she could not doubt it ; he was there, handsome, alive, dressed 
in his brilliant uniform, his plume on his head, his sword by 
his side ! 

Phœbus ! ’’ she cried, ^^my Phœbus 

And she tried to stretch towards him arms trembling with 
love and rapture, but they were bound. 

Then she saw the çaptain frown, a beautiful young girl who 


THREE HUM AN HE ARTS, 


131 


was leaning against Mm gazed at him with. disdainful lips and 
irritated eyes; then Phœbus uttered some words wMch. did 
not reach. her, and both disappeared precipitately behind the 
window opening upon the balcony, which closed after them. 
Phœbus ! ” she cried wildly, can it be you believe it ? ’’ 

A monstrous thought had just presented itself to her. She 
remembered that she had been condemned to death for murder 
committed on the person of Phœbus de Châteaupers. 

She had borne up until that moment. But this last blow 
was too harsh. She fell lifeless on the pavement. 

Corne,” said Charmolue, carry her to the cart, and make 
an end of it.” 

No one had yet observed in the gallery of the statues of the 
kings, carved directly above the arches of the portai, a strange 
spectator, who had, up to that time, observed everything with 
such impassiveness, with a neck so strained, a visage so hide- 
ous that, in his motley accoutrement of red and violet, he 
might hâve been taken for one of those stone monsters 
through whose mouths the long gutters of the cathédral hâve 
discharged their waters for six hundred years. This spectator 
had missed nothing that had taken place since midday in 
front of the portai of Notre-Dame. And at the very begin- 
ning he had securely fastened to one of the smali columns a 
large knotted rope, one end of which trailed on the flight of 
steps below. This being done, he began to look on tranquilly, 
whistling from time to time when a blackbird flitted past. 

Suddenly, at the moment when the superintendent’s assist- 
ants were preparing to execute Charmolue’s phlegmatic order, 
he threw his leg over the balustrade of the gallery, seized the 
rope with his feet, his knees and his hands ; then he was seen 
to glide down the façade, as a drop of rain slips down a win- 
dow-pane, rush to the two executioners with the swiftness of a 
cat which has fallen from a roof, knock them down with two 
enormous fists, pick up the gypsy with one hand, as a child 
would her doll, and dash back into the church with a single 
bound, lifting the young girl above his head and crying in a 
formidable voice, — 

Sanctuary ! ” 


132 


NOTBE-DAME. 


Tliis was done with such. rapidity, that had it taken place at 
night, the whole of it could hâve been seen in the space of a 
single flash of lightning. 

“ Sanctiiary î Sanctuary ! ’’ repeated the crowd ; and the 
clapping of ten thousand hands made Quasimodo’s single eye 
sparkle with joy and pride. 

This shock restored the condemned girl to her senses. She 
raised her eyelids, looked at Quasimodo, then closed them 
again snddenly, as though terrified by her deliverer. 

Charmolne was stupefied, as well as the executioners and the 
entire escort. In fact, within the bounds of Notre-Dame, the 
condemned girl conld not be tonched. The cathédral was a 
place of refuge. Ail temporal jurisdiction expired upon its 
threshold. 

Quasimodo had halted beneath the great portai, his huge 
feet seemed as solid on the pavement of the church as the 
heavy Eoman pillars. His great, bushy head sat low between 
his shoulders, like the heads of lions, who also hâve a mane 
and no neck. He held the young girl, who was quivering ail 
over, suspended from his horny hands like a white drapery ; 
but he carried her with as much care as though he feared 
to break her or blight her. One would hâve said that he felt that 
she was a délicate, exquisite, precious thing, made for other 
hands than his. There were moments when he looked as if 
not daring to^touch her, even with his breath. Then, ail at once, 
he would press her forcibly in his arms, against his angular 
bosom, like his own possession, his treasure, as the mother of 
that child would hâve done. His gnome’s eye, fastened upon 
her, inundated her with tenderness, sadness, and pity, and was 
snddenly raised filled with lightnings. Then the women 
laughed and wept, the crowd stamped with enthusiasm, for, at 
that moment Quasimodo had a beauty of his own. He was 
handsome; he, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast, he 
felt himself august and strong, he gazed in the face of that 
society from which he was banished, and in which he had so 
powerfully intervened, of that human justice from which he 
had wrenched its prey, of ail those tigers whose jaws were 
forced to remain empty, of those policemen, those judges, 


THREE HUM AN HE ARTS. 


133 


those executioners, of ail that force of the king which ke, 
the meanest of créatures, had just broken, witb tbe force of 
God. 

And then, it was toucbing to behold this protection which 
had fallen from a being so hideous upon a being so unhappy, 
a créature condemned to death saved by Quasimodo. They 
were two extremes of natural and social wretchedness, coming 
into contact and aiding each other. 

Meanwhile, after several moments of triumph, Quasimodo 
had plunged abruptly into the church with his burden. The 
populace, fond of ail prowess, sought him with their eyes, 
beneath the gloomy nave, regretting that he had so speedily 
disappeared from their acclamations. Ail at once, he was 
seen to re-appear at one of the extremities of the gallery of 
the kings of France ; he traversed it, running like a madman, 
raising his conquest high in his arms and shouting : Sanc- 
tuary ! ’’ The crowd broke forth into fresh applause. The 
gallery passed, he plunged once more into the interior of the 
church. A moment later, he re-appeared upon the upper 
platform, with the gypsy still in his arms, still running 
niadly, still crying, Sanctuary ! ’’ and the throng applauded. 
Finally, he made his appearance for the third time upon the 
summit of the tower where hung the great bell ; from that 
point he seemed to be showing to the entire city the girl 
whom he had saved, and his voice of thunder, that voice 
which was so rarely heard, and which he never heard himself, 
repeated thrice with frenzy, even to the clouds : Sanctuary ! 
Sanctuary ! Sanctuary ! 

‘^Noël! Noël l” shouted the populace in its turn; and that 
immense acclamation flew to astonish the crowd assembled 
at the Grève on the other bank, and the recluse who was still 
waiting with her eyes riveted on the gibbet. 




BOOK NINTH. 


CHAPTEE I. 

DELIRIUM. 

Claude Frollo was no longer in Notre-Dame when his 
adopted son so abruptly eut tlie fatal web in wbich the arch- 
deacon and the gypsy were entangled. On returning to the 
sacristy he had torn off his alb, cope, and stole, had flung ail 
into the hands of the stupefied beadle, had made his escape 
through the private door of the cloister, had ordered a boat- 
man of the Terrain to transport him to the left bank of the 
Seine, and had plunged into the hilly streets of the Uni- 
versity, not knowing whither he was going, encountering at 
every step groups of men and women who were hurrying 
joyously towards the Pont Saint-Michel, in the hope of still 
arriving in time to see the witch hung there, — pale, wild, 
more troubled, more blind and more fierce than a night bird 
let loose and pursued by a troop of children in broad day- 
light. He no longer knew where he was, what he thought, 
or whether he were dreaming. He went forward, walking, 
running, taking any Street at haphazard, making no choice, 
only urged ever onward away from the Grève, the horrible 
Grève, which he felt confusedly, to be behind him. 

In this manner he skirted Mount Sainte-Geneviève, and 
finally emerged from the town by the Porte Saint-Victor. 

135 


136 


NOTRE-DAME. 


He continued his flight as long as he could see, when he 
turned round, the turreted enclosure of the University, and 
the rare houses of the suburb ; but, when, at length, a rise of 
ground had completely concealed from him that odious Paris, 
when he could believe himself to be a hundred leagues dis- 
tant from it, in the fields, in the desert, he halted, and it 
seemed to him that he breathed more freely. 

Then frightful ideas thronged his mind. Once more he 
could see clearly into his soûl, and he shuddered. He 
thought of that unhappy girl who had destroyed him, and 
whom he had destroyed. He cast a haggard eye over the 
double, tortuous way which fate had caused their two desti- 
nies to pursue up to their point of intersection, where it had 
dashed them against each other without mercy. He medi- 
tated on the folly of eternal vows, on the vanity of chastity, 
of science, of religion, of virtue, on the uselessness of God. 
He plunged to his heart’s content in evil thoughts, and in 
proportion as he sank deeper, he felt a Satanic laugh burst 
forth within him. 

And as he thus sifted his soûl to the bottom, when he per- 
ceived how large a space nature had prepared there for the 
passions, he sneered still more bitterly. He stirred up in the 
depths of his heart ail his hatred, ail his malevolence ; and, 
with the cold glance of a physician who examines a patient, 
he recognized the fact that this malevolence was nothing but 
vitiated love ; that love, that source of every virtue in man, 
turned to horrible things in the heart of a priest, and that a 
man constituted like himself, in making himself a priest, 
made himself a démon. Then he laughed frightfully, and 
suddenly becanie pale again, when he considered the most 
sinister side of his fatal passion, of - that corrosive, venomous 
malignant, implacable love, which had ended only in the gib- 
bet for one of them and in hell for the other ; condemnation 
for her, damnation for him. 

And then his laughter came again, when he reflected that 
Phœbus was alive ; that after ail, the captain lived, was gay 
and happy, had handsomer doublets than ever, and a new mis- 
tress whom he was conducting to see the old one hanged. 


DELIRIUM. 


137 


His sneer redoubled its bitterness when he reflected tbat ont 
of the living beings whose death lie had desired, the gypsy, 
the only créature whom he did not hâte, was the only one who 
had not escaped him. 

Then from the captain, his thought passed to the people, 
and there came to him a jealousy of an unprecedented sort. 
He reflected that the people also, the entire populace, had 
had before their eyes the woman whom he loved exposed 
almost naked. He writhed his arms with agony as he thought 
that the ivoman whose form, caught by him alone in the dark- 
ness would hâve been suprême happiness, had been delivered 
up in broad daylight at full noonday, to a whole people, clad 
as for a night of voluptuousness. He wept with rage over ail 
these mysteries of love, profaned, soiled, laid bare, withered 
forever. He wept with rage as he pictured to himself how 
many impure looks had been gratihed at the sight of that 
badly fastened shift, and that this beautiful girl, this virgin 
lily, this cup of modesty and delight, to which he would hâve 
dared to place his lips only trembling, had just been trans- 
formed into a sort of public bowl, whereat the vilest populace 
of Paris, thieves, beggars, lackeys, had corne to quaff in com- 
mon an audacious, impure, and depraved pleasure. 

And when he sought to picture to himself the happiness 
which he might hâve found upon earth, if she had not been a 
gypsy, and if he had not been a priest, if Phœbus had not 
existed and if she had loved him ; when he pictured to him- 
self that a life of serenity and love would hâve been possible 
to him also, even to him ; that there were at that very moment, 
here and there upon the earth, happy couples spending the 
hours in sweet converse beneath orange trees, on the banks of 
brooks, in the presence of a setting sun, of a starry night ; 
and that if God had so willed, he might hâve formed with her 
one of those blessed couples, — his heart melted in tenderness 
and despair. 

Oh ! she î still she ! It was this fixed idea which returned 
incessantly, which tortured him, which ate into his brain, and 
rent his vitals. He did not regret, he did not repent ; ail that 
he had done he was ready to do again ; he preferred to behold 


138 


NOTRE-DAME. 


her in the hands of the executioner rather than in the arms of 
the captain. But he suffered ; he suffered so that at intervals 
he tore ont handfuls of his hair to see whether it were not 
turning white. 

Among other moments there came one, when it occurred to 
him that it was perhaps the very minute when the hideous 
Chain which he had seen that morning, was pressing its iron 
noose doser about that frail and graceful neck. This thought 
caused the perspiration to start from every pore. 

There was another moment when, while laughing diaboli- 
cally at himself, he represented to himself la Esmeralda as he 
had seen her on that first day, lively, careless, joyous, gayly 
attired, dancing, winged, harmonious, and la Esmeralda of the 
last day, in her scanty shift, with a rope about her neck, 
mounting slowly with her bare feet, the angular ladder of the 
gallows ; he figured to himself this double picture in such a 
manner that he gave vent to a terrible cry. 

While this hurricane of despair overturned, broke, tore up, 
bent, uprooted everything in his soûl, he gazed at nature 
around him. At his feet, some chickens were searching the 
thickets and pecking, enamelled beetles ran about in the sun ; 
overhead, some groups of dappled gray clouds were floating 
across the blue sky ; on the horizon, the spire of the Abbey 
Saint-Victor pierced the ridge of the hill with its slate obe- 
lisk ; and the miller of the Copeaue hillock was whistling as 
he watched the laborious wings of his mill turning. Ail this 
active, organized, tranquil life, recurring around him under 
a thousand forms, hurt him. He resumed his flight. 

He sped thus across the fields until evening. This flight 
from nature, life, himself, man, God, everything, lasted ail day 
long. Sometimes he flung himself face downward on the 
earth, and tore up the young blades of wheat with his nails. 
Sometimes he halted in the deserted Street of a village, and 
his thoughts were so intolérable that he grasped his head in 
both hands and tried to tear it from his shoulders in order 
to dash it upon the pavement. 

Towards the hour of sunset, he examined himself again, 
and found himself nearly mad. The tempest which had raged 


DELIRIUM. 


139 


within him ever since the instant when he had lost the hope 
and the will to save the gypsy, — that tempes t had not left in 
his conscience a single healthy idea, a single thought which 
maintained its upright position. His reason lay there alrnost 
entirely destroyed. There remained but two distinct images 
in his mind, la Esmeralda and the gallows ; ail the rest was 
blank. Those two images united, presented to him a frightful 
group ; and the more he concentrated what attention and 
thought was left to him, the more he beheld them grow, in 
accordance with a fantastic progression, the one in grâce, in 
charm, in beauty, in light, the other in deformity and horror ; 
so that at last la Esmeralda appeared to him like a star, the 
gibbet like an enormous, fleshless arm. 

One remarkable fact is, that during the whole of this tor- 
ture, the idea of dying did not seriously occur to him. The 
wretch was made so. He clung to life. Perhaps he really 
saw hell beyond it. 

Meanwhile, the day continued to décliné. The living being 
which still existed in him reflected vaguely on retracing its 
steps. He believed himself to be far away from Paris ; on 
taking his bearings, he perceived that he had only circled the 
enclosure of the University. The spire of Saint-Sulpice, and 
the three lofty needles of Saint Germain-des-Prés, rose above 
the horizon on his right. He turned his steps in that direc- 
tion. When he heard the brisk challenge of the men-at-arms 
of the abbey, around the crenelated, circumscribing wall of 
Saint-Germain, he turned aside, took a path which presented 
itself between the abbey and the lazar-house of the bourg, and 
at the expiration of a few minutes found himself on the 
verge of the Pré-aux-Clercs. This meadow was celebrated by 
reason of the brawls which went on there night and day ; it 
was the hijdra of the poor monks of Saint-Germain : quod 
monachis Sancti-Germaini pratensis hydra fuit, clericis nova 
semper dissidlorum capita suscitantibus. The archdeacon was 
afraid of meeting some one there; he feared every human 
countenance ; he had just avoided the University and the Bourg 
Saint-Germain ; he wished to re-enter the streets as late as 
possible. He skirted the Pré-aux-Clercs, took the deserted path 


140 


NOTBE-BAMK 


wliicli separated it from tlie Dieu-Neuf, and at last reached the 
water’s edge. There Dom Claude found a boatnian, wlio, for 
a few fartliings in Parisian coinage, rowed liim up the Seine as 
far as the point of the city, and landed hiin on that tongue 
of ahandoned land where the reader has already beheld Grin- 
goire dreaming, and which was prolonged beyond the king’s 
gardens, parallel to the Ile du Passeur-aux-Vaches. 

The monotonous rocking of the boat and the ripple of the 
water had, in sonie sort, quieted the unhappy Claude. When 
the boatman had taken his departure, he reniained standing 
stupidly on the strand, staring straight before him and per- 
ceiving objects only through magnifying oscillations which 
rendered everything a sort of phantasmagoria to him. The 
fatigue of a great grief not infrequently produces this effect 
on the mind. 

The sun had set behind the lofty Tour-de-Nesle. It was the 
twilight hour. The sky was white, the water of the river was 
white. Between these two white expanses, the left bank of 
the Seine, on which his eyes were fixed, projected its gloomy 
mass and, rendered ever thinner and thinner by perspective, it 
plunged into the gloom of the horizon like a black spire. It 
was loaded with houses, of which only the obscure ontline 
could be distinguished, sharply brought out in shadows against 
the light background of the sky and the water. Here and 
there Windows began to gleam, like the holes in a brazier. 
That immense black obelisk thus isolated between the two 
white expanses of the sky and the river, which was very broad 
at this point, produced upon Dom Claude a singular effect, 
comparable to that which would be experienced by a man 
who, reclining on his back at the foot of the tower of Stras- 
burg, should gaze at the enormous spire plunging into the 
shadows of the twilight above his head. Only, in this case, 
it was Claude who was erect and the obelisk which was lying 
down ; but, as the river, reflecting the sky, prolonged the abyss 
below him, the immense promontory seemed to be as boldly 
launched into space as any cathédral spire ; and the impression 
was the same. This impression had even one stronger and 
more profound point about it, that it was indeed the tower 


DELIRIUM. 


141 


of Strasbourg, but tlie tower of Strasbourg two leagues in 
lieiglit ; something unlieard of, gigantic, immeasurable ; an 
édifice such as no liuman eye lias ever seen ; a tower of Babel. 
The chimneys of tlie bouses, the battlements of the walls, the 
faceted gables of the roofs, the spire of the Augustines, the 
tower of Nesle, ail these projections which broke the profile 
of the colossal obelisk added to the illusion by displaying in 
eccentric fashion to the eye the indentations of a luxuriant 
and fantastic sculpture. 

Claude, in the state of hallucination in which he found him- 
self, believed that he saw, that he saw with his actual eyes, 
the bell tower of hell ; the thousand lights scattered over the 
whole height of the terrible tower seemed to him so many 
porches of the immense interior furnace ; the voices and 
noises which escaped from it seemed so many shrieks, so 
many death groans. Then he became alarmed, he put his 
hands on his ears that he might no longer hear, turned his 
back that he might no longer see, and fled from the frightful 
vision with hasty strides. 

But the vision was in himself. 

When he re-entered the streets, the passers-by elbowing each 
other by the light of the shop-fronts, produced upon him the 
effect of a constant going and coming of spectres about him. 
There were strange noises in his ears ; extraordinary fancies 
disturbed his brain. He saw neither houses, nor pavements, 
nor chariots, nor men and women, but a chaos of indeter- 
minate objects whose edges melted into each other. At the 
corner of the Eue de la Barillerie, there was a grocer’s shop 
whose porch was garnished ail about, according to immémorial 
custom, with hoops of tin from which hung a circle of wooden 
candies, which came in contact with each other in the wind, 
and rattled like castanets. He thought he heard a cluster of 
skeletons at Mont faucon clashing together in the gloom. 

Oh ! he muttered, ^Hhe night breeze dashes them against 
each other, and mingles the noise of their chains with the 
rattle of their bones ! Perhaps she is there among them ! ” 

In his State of frenzy, he knew not whither he was going. 
After a few strides he found himself on the Pont Saint- 


142 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Michel. There was a light in the window of a ground-fioor 
room ; he approached. Throngli a cracked window he beheld 
a mean chamber which recalled some confused memory to bis 
mind. In that room, badly lighted by a meagre lamp, there 
was a fresh, light-haired young man, with a merry face, who 
amid loud bursts of laughter was embracing a very audaciously 
attired young girl ; and near the lamp sat an old crone spin- 
ning and singing in a quavering voice. As the young man did 
not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman’s ditty 
re^ched the priest ; it was something unintelligible y et fright- 
ful, — 

“ Grève, aboie, Grève, grouille! 

File, file, ma quenouille, 

File sa corde au bourreau. 

Qui siffle dans le préau. 

Grève, aboie. Grève, grouille! 

“ La belle corde de chanvre! 

Semez d’Issy jusqu’à Vanvre 
Du chanvre et non pas du blé. 

Le voleur n’a pas volé 
La belle corde de chanvre. 

“Grève, grouille. Grève, aboie! 

Pour voir la fille de joie. 

Prendre au gibet chassieux. 

Les fenêtres sont des yeux. 

Grève, grouille. Grève, aboie!” * 

Thereupon the young man laughed and caressed the wench. 
The crone was la Falourdel ; the girl was a courtesan ; the 
young man was his brother J ehan. 

He continued to gaze. That spectacle was as good as any 
other. 

He saw Jehan go to a window at the end of the room, open 
it, cast a glance on the quay, where in the distance blazed a 

* Bark, Grève, grumble. Grève! Spin, spin, niy distaff, spin lier rope 
for the hangman, who is whistling in the meadow. What a beautiful 
hempen rope! Sow hemp, not wheat, from Issy to Yanvre. The thief 
hath not stolen the beautiful hempen rope. Grumble, Grève, bark, 
Grève ! To see the dissolute wench hang on the blear-eyed gibbet, Win- 
dows are eyes. 


DELIRIUM. 143 

tliousand lighted casements, and he heard him say as lie 
closed the sash, — 

“ ’Pon my soûl ! How dark it is ; the people are lighting 
their candies, and the good God his stars/^ 

Then Jehan came back to the hag, smashed a bottle stand- 
ing on the table, exclaiming, — 

Already enipty, cor-bœuf ! and I hâve no more money ! 
Isabeau, my dear, I shall not be satisfied with Jupiter until 
he has changed your two white nipples into two black bottles, 
where I may suck wine of Beaune day and night.” 

This fine pleasantry made the court esan laugh, and Jehan 
left the room. 

Dom Claude had barely time to fling himself on the ground 
in order that he might not be met, stared in the face and rec- 
ognized by his brother. Luckily, the Street was dark, and 
the scholar was tipsy. Nevertheless, he caught sight of the 
archdeacon prone upon the earth in the mud. 

‘‘ Oh ! oh ! ” said he ; here’s a fellow who has been leading 
a jolly life, to-day.” 

He stirred up Dom Claude with his foot, and the latter 
held his breath. 

“Dead drunk,’’ resumed Jehan. Corne, he’s full. A 
regular leech detached from a hogshead. He’s bald,’’ he 
added, bending down, ’tis an old man ! Fortunate senex ! ’’ 

Then Dom Claude heard him retreat, saying, — 

’ Tis ail the same, reason is a fine thing, and my brother 
the archdeacon is very happy in that he is wise and has 
money.” 

Then the archdeacon rose to his feet, and ran without halt- 
ing, towards Notre-Dame, whose enormous towers he beheld 
rising above the houses through the gloom. 

At the instant when he arrived, panting, on the Place du 
Parvis, he shrank back and dared not raise his eyes to the 
fatal édifice. 

“ Oh ! ” he said, in a low voice, is it really true that such 
a thing took place here, to-day, this very morning ? ” 

Still, he ventured to glance at the church. The front was 
sombre ; the sky behind was glittering with stars. The cres- 


144 


NOTRE-DAME. 


cent of the moon, in lier flight upward from tlie horizon, 
had pansed at the moment, on the summit of the right hand 
tower, and seemed to hâve perched itself, like a luminous 
bird, on the edge of the balustrade, eut ont in black trefoils. 

The cloister door was shut ; but the archdeacon always 
carried with him the key of the tower in which his laboratory 
was situated. He made use of it to enter the church. 

In the church he found the gloom and silence of a cavern. 
By the deep shadows which fell in broad sheets from ail 
directions, he recognized the fact that the hangings for the 
ceremony of the morning had not yet been removed. The 
great silver cross shone from the depths of the gloom, pow- 
dered with some sparkling points, like the milky way of that 
sepulchral night. The long Windows of the choir showed 
the upper extremities of their arches above the black draper- 
ies, and their painted panes, traversed by a ray of moonlight 
had no longer any hues but the doubtful colors of night, a 
sort of violet, white and blue, whose tint is found only on the 
faces of the dead. The archdeacon, on perceiving these wan 
spots ail around the choir, thought he beheld the mitres of 
damned bishops. He shut his eyes, and when he opened 
them again, he thought they were a circle of pale visages 
gazing at him. 

He started to flee across the church. Then it seemed to 
him that the church also was shaking, moving, becoming 
endued with animation, that it was alive ; that each of the 
great columns was turning into an enormous paw, which was 
beating the earth with its big stone spatula, and that the 
gigantic cathédral was no longer anything but a sort of pro- 
digious éléphant, which was breathing and marching with its 
pillars for feet, its two towers for trunks and the immense 
black cloth for its housings. 

This fever or madness had reached such a degree of inten- 
sity that the external world was no longer anything more for 
the unhappy man than a sort of Apocalypse, — visible, palpa- 
ble, terrible. 

For one moment, he was relieved. As he plunged into the 
side aisles, he perceived a reddish light behind a cluster of 


BELIRIUM. 


145 


pillars. He ran towards it as to a star. It was the poor lamp 
which lighted the public breviary of Notre-Dame night and 
day, beneath its iron grating. He flung himself eagerly upon 
the holy book in the hope of finding some consolation, or sonie 
encouragement there. The book lay open at tins passage of 
Job, O ver which his staring eye glanced, — 

And a spirit passed before my face, and I heard a small 
voice, and the hair of my flesh stood up.’’ 

On reading these gloomy words, he felt that which a blind 
man feels when he feels himself pricked by the staff which he 
has picked up. His knees gave way beneath him, and he sank 
upon the pavement, thinking of her who had died that day. 
He felt so many monstrous vapors pass and discharge them- 
selves in his brain, that it seemed to him that his head had 
become one of the chimneys of hell. 

It would appear that he remained a long time in this atti- 
tude, no longer thinking, overwhelmed and passive beneath 
the hand of the démon. At length some strength returned to 
him ; it occurred to him to take refuge in his tower beside 
his faithful Quasimodo. He rose ; and, as he was afraid, he 
took the lamp from the breviary to light bis way. It was 
a sacrilege ; but he had got beyond heeding such a trille 
now. 

He slowly climbed the stairs of the towers, filled with a 
secret fright which must hâve been communicated to the rare 
passers-by in the Place du Parvis by the mysterious light of 
his lamp, mounting so late from loophole to loophole of the 
bell tower. 

AU at once, he felt a freshness on his face, and found him- 
self at the door of the highest gallery. The air was cold ; the 
sky was filled with hurrying clouds, whose large, white 
fiakes drifted one upon another like the breaking up of river 
ice after the winter. The crescent of the moon, stranded in 
the midst of the clouds, seemed a celestial vessel caught in 
the ice-cakes of the air. 

He lowered his gaze, and contemplated for a moment, 
through the railing of slender columns which unités the two 
towers, far away, through a gauze of mists and smoke, the 


146 


NOTRE-DAME. 


silent throng of the roofs of Paris, pointed, innumerable, 
crowded and small like the waves of a tranquil sea on a sum- 
mer night. 

The moon cast a feeble ray, which imparted to earth and 
heaven an ashy hne. 

At that moment the dock raised its shrill, cracked voice. 
Midnight rang ont. The priest thought of midday; twelve 
o’clock had corne back again. 

Oh ! he said in a very low tone, she must be cold now. 

Ail at once, a gust of wind extinguished his lamp, and 
almost at the same instant, he beheld a shade, a whiteness, a 
form, a woman, appear from the opposite angle of the tower. 
He started. Beside this woman was a little goat, which min- 
gled its bleat with the last bleat of the dock. 

He had strength enough to look. It was she. 

She was pale, she was gloomy. Her hair fell over her 
shoulders as in the morning ; but there was no longer a rope 
on her neck, her hands were no longer bound ,• she was free, 
she was dead. 

She was dressed in white and had a white veil on her 
head. 

She came towards him, slowly, with her gaze fixed on the 
sky. The supernatural goat followed her. He felt as though 
made of stone and too heavy to flee. At every step which 
she took in advance, he took one backwards, and that was ail. 
In this way he retreated once more beneath the gloomy arch 
of the stairway. He was chilled by the thought that she 
might enter there also ; had she done so, he would hâve died 
of terror. 

She did arrive, in fact, in front of the door to the stairway, 
and paused there for several minutes, stared intently into J;he 
darkness, but without appearing to see the priest, and passed 
on. She seemed taller to him than when she had been alive ; 
he saw the moon through her white robe; he heard her 
breath. 

When she had passed on, he began to descend the staircase 
again, with the slowness which he had observed in the spectre, 
believing himself to be a spectre too, haggard, with hair on 


DELIRIUM. 


147 


end, his extinguished lamp still in his hand ; and as lie de- 
scended the spiral steps, he distinctly heard in his ear a voice 
laugh-ing and repeating, — 

A spirit passed before my face, and I beard a small voice, 
and the bair of my flesb stood up/^ 




CHAPTER IL 

HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME. 

Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in Erance 
down to the time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum. 
Tl^ese sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and bar- 
barous jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a species 
of islands which rose above the level of human justice. 
Every criminal who landed there was safe. There were in 
every suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows. It 
was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of punish- 
ment; two bad things which strove to correct each other. 
The palaces of the king, the hôtels of the princes, and espe- 
cially churches, possessed the right of asylum. Sometimes a 
whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was tem- 
porarily created a place of refuge. Louis XI. made ail Paris 
a refuge in 1467. 

His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred ; 
but he must beware of leaving it ; one step outside the sanc- 
tuary, and he fell back into the flood. The wheel, the gibbet, 
the strappado, kept good gnard around the place of refuge, and 
lay in watch incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a 
vessel. Hence, condemned men were to be seen whose hair 
had grown white in a cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the 
enclosure of an abbey, beneath the porch of a church ; in this 
manner the asylum was a prison as much as any other. It 
sometimes happened that a solemn decree of parliament 
violated the asylum and restored the condemned man to the 
executionerj but this was of rare occurrence. Parliaments 

148 


HUNCHBACKED, ONE EYED, LAME. 


149 


were afraid of the bishops, and when there was friction 
between these two robes, the gown had but a poor chance 
against the cassock. Sometimes, however, as in the affair of 
the assassins of Petit- Jean, the headsman of Paris, and in 
that of Emery Rousseau, the murderer of Jean Valleret, jus- 
tice overleaped the church and passed on to the execution of 
its sentences ; but unless by virtue of a decree of Parliament, 
woe to him who violated a place of asyluin with armed force ! 
The reader knows the manner of death of Robert de Cler- 
mont, Marshal of France, and of J ean de Châlons, Marshal of 
Champagne ; and yet the question was only of a certain Per- 
rin Marc, the clerk of a money-changer, a misérable assassin j 
but the two marshals had broken the doors of St. Méry. 
Therein lay the enormity. 

Such respect was cherished for places of refuge that, accord- 
ing to tradition, animais even felt it at times. Aymoire 
relates that a stag, being chased by Dagobert, having taken 
refuge near the tomb of Saint-Denis, the pack of houndS' 
stopped short and barked. 

Churches generally had a small apartment prepared for the 
réception of supplicants. In 1407, Nicolas Flamel caused to 
be built on the vaults of Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, a 
chamber which cost him four livres six sous, sixteen farthings, 
parisis. 

At Notre-Dame it was a tiny cell situât ed on the roof of the 
side aisle, beneath the flying buttresses, precisely at the spot 
where the wife of the présent janitor of the towers has made 
for herself a garden, which is to the hanging gardens of Baby- 
lon what a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a porteras wife is 
to a Semiramis. 

It was here that Quasimodo had deposited la Esmeralda, 
after his wild and triumphant course. As long as that course 
lasted, the young girl had been unable to recover her senses, 
half unconscious, half awake, no longer feeling anything, ex- 
cept that she was mounting through the air, floating in it, 
flying in it, that something was raising her above the earth. 
Erom time to time she heard the loud laughter, the noisy voice 
of Quasimodo in her earj she half opened her eyesj then 


150 


NOTBE-BAME. 


below her she confusedly beheld Paris checkered witb its 
thousand roofs of slate and tiles, like a red and blue mosaic, 
above her head the frightful and joyous face of Quasimodo. 
Then her eyelids drooped again ; she thonght that ail was 
over, that they had execnted her during her swoon, and that 
the misshapen spirit which had presided over her destiny, 
had laid hold of her and was bearing her away. She dared 
not look at him, and she surrendered herself to her fate. 

But when the bellringer, dishevelled and panting, had de- 
posited her in the cell of refuge, when she felt his huge hands 
gently detaching the cord which brnised her arms, she felt 
that sort of shock which awakens with a start the passen- 
gers of a vessel which runs aground in the middle of a dark 
night. Her thoughts awoke also, and returned to her one by 
one. She saw that she was in Notre-Dame ; she remembered 
having been torn from the hands of the executioner; that 
Phœbus was alive, that Phœbus loved her no longer ; and 
as these two ideas, one of which shed so mnch bitterness over 
the other, presented themselves simultaneously to the poor 
condemned girl ; she turned to Quasimodo, who was standing 
in front of her, and who terrified her ; she said to him, — 
Why hâve you saved me ? ” 

He gazed at her with anxiety, as though seeking to divine 
what she was saying to him. She repeated her question. 
Then he gave her a profoundly sorrowful glance and fled. 

She was astonished. 

A few moments later he returned, bearing a package which 
he cast at her feet. It was clothing which some charitable 
women had left on the threshold of the church for her. 

Then she dropped her eyes upon herself and saw that she 
was almost naked, and blushed. Life had returned. 

Quasimodo appeared to expérience something of this mod- 
esty. He covered his eyes with his large hand and retired 
once more, but slowly. 

She made haste to dress herself. The robe was a white 
one with a white veil, — the garb of a novice of the Hôtel- 
Dieu. 

She had barely finished. when she beheld Quasimodo return- 


HUNCHBACKEB, ONE EYED, LAME. 


151 


ing. He carried a basket under one arm and a mattress under 
the otber. In the basket there was a bottle, bread, and some 
provisions. He set the basket on the floor and said, Eat ! 
He spread the mattress on the flagging and said, Sleep.” 

It was his own repast, it was his own bed, which the bell- 
ringer had gone in search of. 

The gypsy raised her eyes to thank him, but she could not 
articulate a word. She dropped her head with a quiver of 
terror. 

Then he said to her, — 

I frighten you. I am very ugly, am I not ? Do not look 
at me ; only listen to me. During the day you will remain 
here' ; at night you can walk ail over the church. But do not 
leave the church either by day or by night. You would be 
lost. They would kill you, and I should die.’’ 

She was touched and raised her head to answer him. He 
had disappeared. She found herself alone once more, medita- 
ting upon the singular words of this almost monstrous being, 
and struck by the Sound of his voice, which was so hoarse yet 
so gentle. 

Then she examined her cell. It was a chamber about six 
feet square, with a small window and a door on the slightly 
sloping plane of the roof formed of flat stones. Many gutters 
with the figures of animais seemed to be bending down around 
her, and stretching their necks in order to stare at her through 
the window. Over the edge of her roof she perceived the tops 
of thousands of chimneys which caused the smoke of ail the 
lires in Paris to rise beneath her eyes. A sad sight for the 
poor gypsy, a foundling, condemned to death, an unhappy 
créature, without country, without family, without a hearth- 
stone. 

At the moment when the thought of her isolation thus ap- 
peared to her more poignant than ever, she felt a bearded and 
hairy head glide between her hands, upon her knees. She 
started (everything alarmed her now) and looked. It was the 
poor goat, the agile Djali, which had made its escape after 
her, at the moment when Quasimodo had put to fiight Char- 
molue’s brigade, and which had been lavishing caresses on her 


152 


NOTRE-BAME. 


feet for nearly an hour past, withont being able to win a 
glance. Tbe gypsy covered hiin witb kisses. 

“Ob! Djalü’^sbe said, ^^bow I bave forgotten tbee ! And 
so tbou still tbinkest of me ! Oh ! thon art not an ingrate ! ’’ 

At tbe same time, as thougb an invisible hand bad lifted 
tbe weight wbicb bad repressed ber tears in ber heart for so 
long, she began to weep, and, in proportion as ber tears flowed, 
she felt ail that was most acrid and bitter in ber grief départ 
witb tbem. 

Evening came, she tbougbt tbe nigbt so beautiful that she 
made tbe circuit of tbe elevated gallery wbicb surrounds tbe 
church. It afforded ber some relief, so calm did tbe eartb 
appear when viewed from that heigbt. 




CHAPTER III. 


DEAF. 

On the following morning, she perceived on awaking, tliat 
she had been asleep. This singular thing astonished her. 
She had been so long unaccustomed to sleep ! A joyous ray 
of the rising sun entered through her window and touehed 
her face. At the same tiine with the sun, she beheld at that 
window an object which frightened her, the unfortunate face 
of Quasimodo. She involuntarily closed her eyes again, but 
in vain ; she fancied that she still saw through the rosy lids 
that gnome’s mask, one-eyed and gap-toothed. Then, while 
she still kept her eyes closed, she heard a rough voice saying, 
very gently, — 

‘‘ Be not afraid. I am your friend. I came to watch you 
sleep. It does not hurt you if I corne to see you sleep, does 
it ? What différence does it make to you if I am here when 
your eyes are closed ! Now I am going. Stay, I hâve placed 
myself behind the wall. You can open your eyes again.’’ 

There was something more plaintive than these words, and 
that was the accent in which they were uttered. The gypsy, 
niuch touehed, opened her eyes. He was, in fact, no longer 
at the window. She approached the opening, and beheld the 
poor hunchback crouching in an angle of the wall, in a sad 
and resigned attitude. She made an effort to surmount the 
répugnance with which he inspired her. Corne,” she said 
to him gently. Erom the movement of the g^p^y’s lips, 

153 


154 


NOTRE-DAME, 


Quasimodo thought that she was driving him away ; tlien he 
rose and retired limping, slowly, with drooping head, without 
even daring to raise to the young girl his gaze full of despair. 
‘‘Do corne/’ she cried, but he continued to retreat. Then 
she darted from her cell, ran to him, and grasped his arm. 
On feeling her touch him, Quasimodo trembled in every limb. 
He raised his suppliant eye, and seeing that she was leading 
him back to her quarters, his whole face beamed with joy and 
tenderness. She tried to make him enter the cell ; but he 
persisted in remaining on the threshold. “ No, no,” said he ; 
“ the owl enters not the nest of the lark.” 

Then she crouched down gracefully on her couch, with her 
goat asleep at her feet. Both remained motionless for several 
moments, considering in silence, she so much grâce, he so 
much ugliness. Every moment she discovered some fresh 
deformity in Quasimodo. Her glance travelled from his 
knock knees to his humped back, from his humped back to 
his only eye. She could not comprehend the existence of a 
being so awkwardly fashioned. Yet there was so much sad- 
ness and so much gentleness spread over ail this, that she 
began to become reconciled to it. 

He was the first to break the silence. “ So you were tell- 
ing me to return ? ” 

She made an affirmative sign of the head, and said, 
“ Yes.” 

He understood the motion of the head. “ Alas ! ” he said, 
as though hesitating whether to finish, “ I am — I am deaf.” 

“ Poor man ! ” exclaimed the Bohemian, with an expression 
of kindly pity. 

He began to smile sadly. 

“You think that that was ail that I lacked, do you not? 
Yes, I am deaf, that is the way I am made. ’Tis horrible, is 
it not ? You are so beautiful ! ” 

There lay in the accents of the wretched man so profound a 
consciousness of his misery, that she had not the strength to 
say a word. Besides, he would not hâve heard her. He 
went on, — 

“Never hâve I seen my ugliness as at the présent moment. 


DEAF. 


155 


When I compare myself to you, I feel a very great pity for 
myself, poor unhappy monster tliat I am ! Tell me, I must 
look to you like a beast. You, you are a ray of sunshine, a 
drop of dew, the song of a bird ! I am something frightful, 
neither man nor animal, I know not what, barder, more 
trampled under foot, and more unsbapely than a pebble 
stone ! 

Then he began to laugh, and tbat laugh was tbe most heart- 
breaking thing in the world. He continued, — 

^^Yes, I am deaf; but you shall talk to me by gestures, by 
signs. I bave a master who talks witb me in tbat way. 
And tben, I shall very soon know your wisb from the move- 
ment of your lips, from your look.’^ 

^^Well!” she interposed witb a smile, ^^tell me why you 
saved me/’ 

He watched ber attentively while she was speaking. 

I understand,” be replied. “ You ask me wby I saved 
you. You bave forgotten a wretch who tried to abduçt you 
one night, a wretch to whom you rendered succor on the fol- 
lowing day on their infamous pillory. A drop of water and a 
little pity, — tbat is more than I can repay witb my life. 
You bave forgotten tbat wretch; but he remembers it.” 

She listened to him witb profound tenderness. A tear 
swam in the eye of the bellringer, but did not fall. He 
seemed to make it a sort of point of honor to retain it. 

Listen,” be resumed, when he was no longer afraid tbat 
the tear would escape ; our towers here are very high, a 
man who should fall from them would be dead before touch- 
ing the pavement ; when it shall please you to hâve me 
fall, you will not hâve to utter even a word, a glance will 
suffice.” 

Then he rose. Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccen- 
tric being still aroused some compassion in her. She made 
him a sign to remain. 

^^Ho, no,” said he; ‘‘1 must not remain too long. I am not 
at my ease. It is ont of pity that you do not turn away your 
eyes. I shall go to some place where I can see you without 
your seeing me : it will be better so.” 


166 


JS OThE-BAJSIE. 


He drew from liis pocket a little métal whistle. 

^^Here,” said he, ^‘when you hâve need of me, when you 
wish me tp corne, when you will not feel too iniich horror at 
the sight of me, use this whistle. I can hear this sound.^^ 

He laid the whistle on the floor and fled. 




CHAPTER IV. 

EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL. 

Day followed day. Calm gradually returned to the soûl of 
La Esmeralda. Excess of grief, like excess of joy is a violent 
thing which lasts but a short time. The heart of man cannot 
remain long in one. extremity. The gypsy had suffered so 
much, that nothing was left lier but astonishment. With 
security, hope had returned to her. She was outside the pale 
of society, outside the pale of life, but she had a vague feeling 
that it inight not be impossible to return to it. She was like 
a dead person, who should hold in reserve the key to her tomb. 

She felt the terrible images which had so long persecuted 
her, gradually departing. Ail the hideous phantoms, Pierrat 
Torterue, Jacques Charmolue, were effaced from her mind, 
ail, even the priest. 

And then, Phœbus was alive ; she was sure of it, she had 
seen him. To her the fact of Phœbus being alive was every- 
thing. After the sériés of fatal shocks which had overturned 
everything within her, she had found but one thing intact in 
her soûl, one sentiment, — her love for the captain. Love is 
like a tree ; it sprouts forth of itself, sends its roots out deeply 
through our whole being, and often continues to flourish 
greenly over a heart in ruins. 

And the inexplicable point about it is that the more blind 
is this passion, the more tenacious it is. It is never more 
solid than when it has no reason in it. 

La Esmeralda did not think of the captain without bitter- 

157 


158 


NOfîtE-BAME. 


ness, no doubt. No doubt it was terrible that be also shoiild 
bave been deceived; tbat be sbould bave believed tbat im- 
possible tbing, tbat be could bave conceived of a stab dealt 
by ber wbo would bave given a tbousand lives for bim. But, 
after ail, sbe must not be too angry witb bim for it ; bad sbe 
not confessed ber crime ? bad sbe not yielded, weak wonian 
tbat sbe was, to torture ? Tbe fault was entirely bers. Sbe 
sbould bave allowed ber finger nails to be torn out ratber 
tban sucb a word to be wrencbed from ber. In sbort, if sbe 
could but see Pbœbus once more, for a single minute, only 
one Word would be required, one look, in order to undeceive 
bim, to bring bim back. Sbe did not doubt it. Sbe was 
astonisbed also at many singular tbings, at tbe accident of 
Pbœbus’s presence on tbe day of tbe penance, at tbe young 
girl witb wbom be bad been. Sbe was bis sister, no doubt. 
An unreasonable explanation, but sbe contented berself witb 
it, because sbe needed to believe tbat Pbœbus still loved 
ber, and loved ber alone. Had be not sworn it to ber ? Wbat 
more was needed, simple and credulous as sbe was ? And 
tben, in tbis matter, were not appearances mucb more against 
ber tban against bim ? Accordingly, sbe waited. Sbe boped. 

Let us add tbat tbe cburcb, tbat vast cburcb, wbicb sur- 
rounded ber on every side, wbicb guarded ber, wbicb saved 
ber, was itself a sovereign tranquillizer. Tbe solemn lines 
of tbat architecture, tbe religions attitude of ail tbe objects 
wbicb surrounded tbe young girl, tbe serene and pious 
tbougbts wbicb emanated, so to speak, from ail tbe pores of 
tbat stone, acted upon ber witbout ber being aware of it. Tbe 
édifice had also sounds fraugbt witb sucb bénédiction and 
sucb majesty, that they soothed tbis ailing soûl. The monot- 
onous chanting of tbe célébrants, tbe responses of tbe people 
to tbe priest, sometimes inarticulate, sdmetimes thunderous, 
tbe harmonious trembling of tbe painted Windows, tbe organ, 
bursting forth like a bundred trumpets, tbe three belfries, 
humming like hives of huge bees, that whole orchestra on 
wbicb bounded a gigantic scale, ascending, descending inces- 
santly from tbe voice of a throng to that of one bell, dulled 
ber memory, ber imagination, ber grief. The bells, in partie- 


ËAnmEmvAiiE and cbystal. 


159 


ular, lulled her. It was something like a powerful magnetism 
which those vast instruments shed over her in great waves. 

Thus every sunrise found her more calm, breathing better, 
less pale. In proportion as her inward wounds closed, her 
grâce and beauty blossomed once more on her countenance, 
but more thoughtful, more reposeful. Her former character 
also returned to her, somewhat even of her gayety, her pretty 
pout, her love for her goat, her love for singing, her modesty. 
She took care to dress herself in the morning in the corner of 
her cell for fear some inhabitants of the neighboring attics 
might see her through the window. 

When the thought of Phœbus left her time, the gypsy some- 
times thought of Quasimodo. He was the sole bond, the sole 
connection, the sole communication which remained to her 
with men, with the living. Unfortunate girl ! she was more 
outside the world than Quasimodo. She understood not 
in the least the strange friend whom chance had given her. 
She often reproached herself for not feeling a gratitude which 
should close her eyes, but decidedly, she could not accustom 
herself to the poor bellringer. He- was too ugly. 

She had left the whistle which he had given her lying on 
the ground. This did not prevent Quasimodo from making his 
appearance from time to time during the first few days. She 
did her best not to turn aside with too much répugnance when 
he came to bring her her basket of provisions or her jug of 
water, but he always perceived the slightest movement of 
this sort, and then he withdrew sadly. 

Once he came at the moment when she was caressing 
Djali. He stood pensively for several minutes before this 
graceful group of the goat and the gypsy; at last he said, 
shaking his heavy and ill-formed head, — 

“ My misfortune is that I still resemble a man too much. I 
should like to be wholly a beast like that goat.” 

She gazed at him in amazement. 

He replied to the glance, — 

Oh ! I well know why,” and he went away. 

On another occasion he presented himself at the door of the 
cell (which he never entered) at the moment when la Esmer- 


160 


NOTBE-BAME. 


aida was singing an old Spanish ballad, the words of wliich 
she did not understand, but wbicli had lingered in ber ear 
because tbe gypsy women bad lulled ber to sleep witb it 
wben sbe was a little cbild. At tbe sigbt of tbat villanous 
form wbicb made its appearance so abruptly in tbe middle of 
ber song, tbe young girl paused witb an involuntary gesture 
of alarm. Tbe unbappy bellringer fell upon bis knees on tbe 
tbresbold, and clasped bis large, missbapen bands witb a sup- 
pliant air. Ob ! be said, sorrowfully, continue, I implore 
you, and do not drive me away.’’ Sbe did not wisb to pain 
bim, and resumed ber lay, trembling ail over. By degrees, 
bowever, ber terror disappeared, and sbe yielded berself 
wbolly to tbe slow and melancboly air wbicb sbe was singing. 
He remained on bis knees witb bands clasped, as in prayer, 
attentive, bardly breatbing, bis gaze riveted upon tbe gypsy^s 
brilliant eyes. 

On anotber occasion, be came to ber witb an awkward and 
timid air. Listen,’’ be said, witb an effort ; “ I bave some- 
tbing to say to you.’’ Sbe made bim a sign tbat sbe was list- 
ening. Tben be began to sigb, balf opened bis lips, appeared 
for a moment to be on tbe point of speaking, tben be looked 
at ber again, sbook bis bead, and witbdrew slowly, witb bis 
brow in bis band, leaving tbe gypsy stupefied. 

Among tbe grotesque personages sculptured on tbe wall, 
tbere was one to wbom be was particularly attacbed, and witb 
wbicb be often seemed to excbange fraternal glances. Once 
tbe gypsy beard bim saying to it, — 

Ob ! wby am not I of stone, like you ! ” 

At last, one morning, la Esmeralda had advanced to tbe 
edge of tbe roof, and was looking into tbe Place over tbe 
pointed roof of Saint- Jean le Eond. Quasimodo was stand- 
ing bebind ber. He had placed himself in tbat position in 
order to spare the young girl, as far as possible, the displeas- 
ure of seeing bim. Ail at once tbe gypsy started, a tear 
and a flash of joy gleamed simultaneously in ber eyes, she 
knelt on the brink of tbe roof and extended ber arms towards 
tbe Place witb anguish, exclaiming : Pbœbus ! corne ! corne ! 
a Word, a single word in the name of heaven ! Pbœbus ! 


EABTHENWABE AND CBYSTAL. 


161 


Phœbus ! ’’ Her voice, lier face, lier gesture, lier wliole person 
bore the beartrending expression of a shipwrecked man who 
is making a signal of distress to the joyous vessel which is 
passing afar off in a ray of sunlight on the horizon. 

Quasimodo leaned over the Place, and saw that the object 
of this tender and agonizing prayer was a young man, a cap- 
tain, a handsome cavalier ail glittering with arins and décora- 
tions, prancing across the end of the Place, and saluting with 
his plume a beantiful lady who was smiling at him from her 
balcony. However, the ofi&cer did not hear the unhappy girl 
calling him ; he was too far away. 

But the poor deaf man heard. A profound sigh heaved his 
breast ; he turned round ; his heart was swollen with ail the 
tears which he was swallowing ; his convulsively-clenched tists 
struck against his head, and when he withdrew them there 
was a bunch of red hair in each hand. 

The gypsy paid no heed to him. He said in a low voice as 
he gnashed his teeth, — 

Damnation ! That is what one should be like ! ’Tis only 
necessary to be handsome on the outside ! ” 

Meanwhile, she remained kneeling, and cried with extraor- 
dinary agitation, — 

Oh ! there he is alighting from his horse ! He is about to 
enter that house ! — Phœbus ! — He does not hear me ! Phœ- 
bus ! — How wicked that woman is to speak to him at the 
same time with me ! Phœbus ! Phœbus ! ’’ 

The deaf man gazed at her. He understood this pantomime. 
The poor bellringer’s eye filled with tears, but he let noue 
fall. Ail at once he pulled her gently by the border of her 
sleeve. She turned round. He had assumed a tranquil air ; 
he said to her, — 

Would you like to hâve me bring him to you ? 

She uttered a cry of joy. 

Oh ! go ! hasten ! run ! quick ! that captain ! that cap- 
tain ! bring him to me ! I will love you for it ! ’’ 

She clasped his knees. He could not refrain from shaking 
his head sadly. 

“ I will bring him to you/^ he said, in a weak voice. Then 


162 


NOTRE-DAME. 


he turned liis head and plunged down the staircase with great 
strides, stifling with sobs. 

When he reached the Place, he no longer saw anything ex- 
cept the handsome horse hitched at the door of the Gonde- 
laurier house ; the captain had just entered there. 

He raised his eyes to the roof of the church. La Esmeralda 
was there in the saine spot, in the same attitude. He niade 
her a sad sign with his head ; then he planted his back against 
one of the stone posts of the Gondelaurier porch, determined 
to wait until the captain should corne forth. 

In the Gondelaurier house it was one of those gala days 
which précédé a wedding. Quasimodo beheld many people 
enter, but no one corne out. He cast a glance towards the 
roof from time to time ; the gypsy did not stir any more than 
himself. A groom came and unhitched the horse and led it to 
the stable of the house. 

The entire day passed thus, Quasimodo at his post, la 
Esmeralda on the roof, Phœbus, no doubt, at the feet of 
Eleur-de-Lys. 

At length night came, a moonless night, a dark night. 
Quasimodo fixed his gaze in vain upon la Esmeralda; soon 
she was no more than a whiteness amid the twilight ; then 
nothing. Ail was effaced, ail was black. 

Quasimodo beheld the front Windows from top to bottom of 
the Gondelaurier mansion illuminated; he saw the other 
casements in the Place lighted one by one, he also saw them 
extinguished to the very last, for he remained the whole even- 
ing at his post. The ofïicer did not corne forth. When the 
last passers-by had returned home, when the Windows of ail 
the other houses were extinguished, Quasimodo was left en- 
tirely alone, entirely in the dark. There were at that time 
no lamps in the square before Notre-Dame. 

Meanwhile, the Windows of the Gondelaurier mansion re- 
mained lighted, even after midnight. Quasimodo, motionless 
and attentive, beheld a throng of lively, dancing shadows 
pass athwart the many-colored painted panes. Had he not 
been deaf, he would hâve heard more and more distinctly, 
in proportion as the noise of sleeping Paris died away, a 


EABTHENWABE AND CBYSTAL. 


163 

Sound of feasting, laughtèr, and music in the Gondelaurier 
mansion. 

Towards one o’clock in the morning, the guests began to 
take their leave. Quasimodo, shrouded in darkness watched 
them ail pass out through the porch illuminated with torches. 
None of them was the cap tain. 

He was hlled with sad thoughts ; at times he looked upwards 
into the air, like a person who is weary of waiting. Great 
black clouds, heavy, torn, split, hung like crape hammocks 
beneath the starry dôme of night. One would hâve pro- 
noimced them spiders’ webs of the vault of heaven. 

In one of these moments he suddenly beheld the long win- 
dow on the balcony, whose stone balustrade projected above 
his head, open mysteriously. The frail glass door gave pas- 
sage to two persons, and closed noiselessly behind them ; it 
was a man and a woman. 

It was not without difficulty that Quasimodo succeeded in 
recognizing in the man the handsome captain, in the woman 
the young lady whom he had seen welcome the officer in the 
morning from that very balcony. The place was perfectly 
dark, and a double crimson curtain which had fallen across 
the door the very moment it closed again, allowed no light to 
reach the balcony from the apartment. 

The young man and the young girl, so far as our deaf man 
could judge, without hearing a single one of their words, ap- 
peared to abandon themselves to a very tender tête-à-tête. 
The young girl seemed to hâve allowed the officer to make a 
girdle for her of his arm, and gently repulsed a kiss. 

Quasimodo looked on from below at this scene which was 
ail the more pleasing to witness because it was not meant to be 
seen. He contemplated with bitterness that beauty, that 
happiness. After ail, nature was not dumb in the poor fel- 
low, and his human sensibility, ail maliciously contorted as it 
was, quivered no less than any other. He thought of the 
misérable portion which Providence had allotted to him j that 
woman and the pleasure of love, would pass fore ver before his 
eyes, and that he should ne ver do anything but behold the 
felicity of others. But that which rent his heart most in this 


164 


NOTEE-BAME. 


siglit, that whicli mingled indignation with his anger, was the 
thought of what the gypsy would suffer could she behold it. 
It is trne that the night was very dark, that la Esmeralda, if 
she had remained at her post (and he had no doubt of this), 
was very far away, and that it was ail that he himself could 
do to distinguish the levers on the balcony. This consoled 
him. 

Meanwhile, their conversation grew more and more ani- 
mated. The young lady appeared to be entreating the ofhcer 
to ask nothing more of her. Of ail this Quasimodo could dis- 
tinguish only the beautiful clasped hands, the smiles mingled 
with tears, the young girTs glances directed to the stars, the 
eyes of the captain lowered ardently upon her. 

Fortunately, for the young girl was beginning to resist but 
feebly, the door of the balcony suddenly opened once more 
and an old dame appeared ; the beauty seemed confused, the 
officer assumed an air of displeasure, and ail three withdrew. 

A moment later, a horse was champing his bit under the 
porch, and the brilliant officer, enveloped in his night cloak, 
passed rapidly before Quasimodo. 

The bellringer allowed him to turn the corner of the Street, 
then he ran after him with his ape-like agility, shouting : 

Hey there ! captain ! ’’ 

The captain halted. 

What wants this knave with me ? ’’ he said, catching sight 
through the gloom of that hipshot form which ran limping 
after him. 

Meanwhile, Quasimodo had caught up with him, and had 
boldly grasped his horse’s bridle : ^'Follow me, captain; there 
is one here who desires to speak with you ! 

‘‘ Cornemahom ! ” grumbled Phœbus, “ here’s a villanous, 
ruffied bird which I fancy I hâve seen somewhere. Hola ! 
master, will you let my horse’s bridle alone ? ” 

Captain,” replied the deaf man, do you not ask me who 
it is ? ” 

I tell you to release my horse,” retorted Phœbus, impa- 
tiently. ^^What means the knave by clinging to the bridle' 
of my steed ? Do you take my horse for a gallows ? ” 


EARTHENWARE AND CRYSTAL. 


165 


Quasimodo, far from releasing th.e bridle, prepared to force 
nim to retrace his steps. Unable to comprebend tbe captain’s 
résistance, he hastened to say to him, — 

“ Corne, captain, ’tis a woinan who is waiting for you.’’ He 
added with an effort : “ A woman who loves you.” 

A rare rascal ! said the captain, who thinks me obliged 
to go to ail the woinen who love me ! or who say they do. 
And what if, by chance, she should resemble you, you face of 
a screech-owl ? Tell the woman who has sent you that I am 
about to marry, and that she may go to the devil ! 

“ Listen,’’ exclaimed Quasimodo, thinking to overcome his 
hésitation with a word, corne, monseigneur ! ’tis the gypsy 
whom you know ! ” 

This Word did, indeed, produce a great effect on Phœbus, 
but not of the kind which the deaf man expected. It will be 
reinembered that our gallant officer had retired with Fleur-de- 
Lys several moments before Quasimodo had rescued the con- 
demned girl from the hands of Charmolue. Afterwards, in 
ail his visits to the Gondelaurier mansion he had taken care 
not to mention that woman, the memory of whom was, after 
ail, painful to him; and on her side, Fleur-de-Lys had not 
deemed it politic to tell him that the gypsy was alive. 
Hence Phœbus believed poor Similar ” to be dead, and that 
a month or two had elapsed since her death. Let us add that 
for the last few moments the captain had been reflecting on 
the profound darkness of the night, the supernatural ugliness, 
the sepulchral voice of the strange messenger ; that it was past 
midnight ; that the Street was deserted, as on the evening when 
the surly monk had accosted him ; and that his horse snorted 
as it looked at Quasimodo. 

The gypsy ! ’’ he exclaimed, almost frightened. “ Look 
here, do you corne from the other world ? 

And he laid his hand on the hilt of his dagger. 

“ Quick, quick,” said the deaf man, endeavoring to drag the 
horse along ; this way ! 

Phœbus dealt him a vigorous kick in the breast. 

Quasimodo’s eye flashed. He made a motion to fling himsel F 
on the captain. Then he drew himself up stiffly and said, — 


166 


NOTBE-DAME. 


“Oh.! how happy you are to hâve some one who loves 
you ! ” 

He emphasized the words “some one/’ and loosing the 
horse’s bridle, — 

“ Begone ! ” 

Phœbus spurred on in ail haste, swearing. Quasimodo 
watched him disappear in the shades of the Street. 

“ Oh ! ” said the poor deaf man, in a very low voice ; “ to 
refuse that ! ” 

He re-entered Notre-Dame, lighted his lamp and climbed to 
the tower again. The gypsy was still in the same place, as 
he had supposed. 

She flew to meet him as far off as she could see him. 

“ Alone ! ” she cried, clasping her beautiful hands sorrow- 
fully. 

“ I could not find him,” said Quasimodo coldly. 

“ You should hâve waited ail night,” she said angrily. 

He saw her gesture of wrath, and understood the reproach. 

“ I will lie in wait for him better another time,” he said, 
dropping his head. 

“ Begone ! ” she said to him. 

He left her. She was displeased with him. He preferred 
to hâve her abuse him rather than to hâve afflicted her. He 
had kept ail the pain to himself. 

From that day forth, the gypsy no longer saw him. He 
ceased to corne to her cell. At the most she occasionally 
caught a glimpse at the summit of the towers, of the bell- 
ringer’s face turned sadly to her. But as soon as she per- 
ceived him, he disappeared. 

We must admit that she was not much grieved by this vol- 
untary absence on the . part of the poor hunchback. At the 
bottom of her heart she was grateful to him for it. More- 
over, Quasimodo did not deceive himself on this point. 

She no longer saw him, but she felt the presence of a good 
genius about her. Her provisions were replenished by an 
invisible hand during her slumbers. One morning she found 
a cage of birds on her window. There was a piece of sculp- 
ture above her window which frightened her. She had 


earthenwahe and ceystal. 


167 


shown this more than once in Quasimodo’s presence. One 
morning, for ail these things happened at night, she no longer 
saw it, it had been broken. The person who had climbed up 
to that carving must hâve risked his life. 

Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed 
beneath the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, 
strange song, as though to lull her to sleep. The Unes were 
unrliyined, such as a deaf person can make. 

Ne regarde pas la figure, 

Jeune fille, regarde le cœur. 

Le cœur d’un beau jeune homme est souvent difforme. 

Il y a des cœurs où 1’ amour ne se conserve pas. 

Jeune fille, le sapin n’est pas beau. 

N’est pas beau comme le peuplier. 

Mais il garde son feuillage l’hiver. 

Hélas ! à quoi bon dire cela? 

Ce qui n’est pas beau a tort d’être; 

La beauté n’aime que la beauté. 

Avril tourne le dos a Janvier. 

La beauté est parfaite, 

La beauté peut tout, 

La beauté est la seule chose qui n’existe pàs a demi. 

Le corbeau ne vole que le jour. 

Le hibou ne vole que la nuit. 

Le cygne vole la nuit et le jour.* 

One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two 
vases filled with flowers. One was a very beantiful and very 
brilliant but cracked vase of glass. It had allowed the water 
with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which 

* Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a 
handsonie young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love 
does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beantiful 
like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter. Alas! What is the 
use of saying that ? That which is not beautiful has no right to exist; 
beauty loves only beauty; April turns her back on January. Beauty is 
perfect, beauty can do ail things, beauty is the only thing which does not 
exist by halves. The raven fiies only by day, the owl Aies only by night, 
the swan Aies by day and by night. . • 


168 


NOTRE-DAME. 


it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware 
pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved ail its 
water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson. 

T know not whether it was done intentionallj, but La 
Esmeralda took the faded nosegay and wore it ail day long 
upon her breast. 

That day she did not hear the voice singing in the tower. 

She troubled herself very little about it. She passed her 
day s in caressing Ljali, in watching the door of the Gonde- 
laurier house, in talking to herself about Phœbus, and in 
crumbling up her bread for the swallows. 

She had entirely ceased to see or hear Quasimodo. The 
poor bellringer seemed to hâve disappeared from the church. 
One night, nevertheless, when she was not asleep, but was 
thinking of her handsome captain, she heard something 
breathing near her cell. She rose in alarm, and saw by the 
light of the moon, a shapeless mass lying across her door on 
the outside. It was Quasimodo asleep there upon the stones. 




CHAPTEE V. 

THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR. 

In the meantime, public rumor had informed tbe arch- 
deacon of tbe miraculous manner in whicb the gypsy had been 
saved. When he learned it, he knew not what his sensations 
were. He had reconciled himself to la Esmeralda’s death. 
In that matter he was tranquil ; he had reached the bottom of 
Personal suffering. The human heart (Dom Claude had medi- 
tated upon these matters) can contain only a certain quantity 
of despair. When the sponge is saturated, the sea may pass 
over it without causing a single drop more to enter it. 

How, with la Esmeralda dead, the sponge was soaked, ail 
was at an end on this earth for Dom Claude. But to feel 
that she was alive, and Phœbus also, meant that tortures, 
shocks, alternatives, life, were beginning again. And Claude 
was weary of ail this. 

When he heard this news, he shut himself in his cell in the 
cloister. He appeared, neither at the meetings of the chapter 
nor at the services. He closed his door against ail, even 
against the bishop. He remained thus immured for several 
weeks. He was believed to be ill. And so he was, in fact. 

What did he do while thus shut up ? With what thoughts 
was the unfortunate man contending ? Was he giving final 
battle to his formidable passion ? Was he concocting a final 
plan of death for her and of perdition for himself ? 

His Jehan, his cherished brother, his spoiled child, came 
once to his door, knocked, swore, entreated, gave his name 
half a score of times. Claude did not open. 

169 


170 


NOTBE-BAME. 


He passed whole days with his face close to the panes of 
his window. ï'roin that window, situated in tlie cloister. lie 
could see la Esmeralda’s chamber. He often saw herself 
with her goat, sometimes with Quasimodo. He remarked the 
little attentions of the ugly deaf man, his obedience, his déli- 
cate and submissive ways with the gypsy. He recalled, for 
he had a good memory, and memory is the tormentor of the 
jealous, he recalled the singular look of the bellringer, bent 
on the dancer upon a certain evening. He asked himself 
what motive could hâve impelled Quasimodo to save her. 
He was the witness of a thousand little scenes between the 
gypsy and the deaf man, the pantomime of which, viewed 
from afar and commented on by his passion, appeared very 
tender to him. He distrusted the capriciousness of women. 
Then he felt a jealousy which he could never hâve believed 
possible awakening within him, a jealousy which made him 
redden with shame and indignation : One might condone the 

captain, but this one ! ’’ This thought upset him. 

His nights were frightful. As soon as he learned that the 
gypsy was alive, the cold ideas of spectre and tomb which 
had persecuted him for a whole day vanished, and the flesh 
returned to goad him. He turned and twisted on his couch 
at the thought that the dark-skinned maiden was so near 
him. 

Every night his delirious imagination represented la Esmer- 
alda to him in ail the attitudes which had caused his blood to 
boil most. He beheld her outstretched upon the poniarded 
captain, her eyes closed, her beautiful bare throat covered 
with Phœbus’s blood, at that moment of bliss when the arch- 
deacon had imprinted on her pale lips that kiss whose burn the 
unhappy girl, thougK half dead, had felt. He beheld her 
again, stripped by the savage hands of the torturers, allowing 
them to bare and to enclose in the boot with its iron screw, her 
tiny foot, her délicate rounded leg, her white and supple knee. 
Again he beheld that ivory knee which alone remained out- 
side of Torterue’s horrible apparatus. Lastly, he pictured the 
young girl in her shift, with the rope about her neck, shoul- 
ders bare, feet bare, almost nude, as he had seen her on that 


THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR. 171 

last day. These images of voluptuousness made liim clench 
his fists, and a shiver run along his spine. 

One night, among others, they heated so cruelly his virgin 
and priestly blood, that he bit his pillow, leaped from his 
bed, flung on a supplice over his shirt, and left his cell, lamp 
in hand, half naked, wild, his eyes aflame. 

He knew where to find the key to the red door, which con- 
nected the cloister with the church, and he always had about 
him, as the reader knows, the key of the staircase leading to 
the towers. 




CHAPTER VL 

CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR. 

That night, la Esmeralda had fallen asleep in lier cell, full 
of oblivion, of bope, and of sweet thoughts. Sbe had already 
been asleep for some time, dreaming as always, of Phœbus, 
when it seemed to her that she heard a noise near her. She 
slept lightly and uneasily, the sleep of a bird ; a mere nothing 
waked her. She opened her eyes. The night was very dark. 
Nevertheless, she saw a figure gazing at her through the win- 
dow ; a lamp lighted up this apparition. The moment that 
the figure saw that la Esmeralda had perceived it, it blew out 
the lamp. But the young girl had had time to catch a glimpse 
of it ; her eyes closed again with terror. 

Oh ! ’’ she said in a faint voice, ^^the priest ! 

Ail her past unhappiness came back to her like a flash of 
lightning. She fell back on her bed, chilled. 

A moment later she felt a touch along her body which made 
her shudder so that she straightened herself up in a sitting 
posture, wide awake and furious. 

The priest had just slipped in beside her. He encircled 
her with both arms. 

She tried to scream and could not. 

‘‘ Begone, monster ! begone assassin ! she said, in a voice 
which was low and trembling with wrath and terror. 

‘‘ Mercy ! mercy ! ” murmured the priest, pressing his lips 
to her shoulder. 


172 


CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE BEH HOOB. 173 

She seized his bald head hj its remnant of hair and tried to 
thrust aside his kisses as though they had been bites. 

Mercy ! ” repeated the unfortunate man. If you but 
knew what my love for you is ! ’Tis lire, melted lead, a thou- 
sand daggers in my heart/^ 

She stopped his two arms with superhuman force. 

Let me go,” she said, “ or I will spit in your face ! ” 

He released her. Vilify me, strike me, be malicious ! Do 
what you will ! But hâve mercy ! love me ! ” 

Then she struck him with the fury of a child. She made 
her beautiful hands stiff to bruise his face. Begone, démon ! ” 

“ Love me ! love me ! pity ! ” cried the poor priest return- 
ing her blows with caresses. 

Ail at once she felt him stronger than herself. 

There must be an end to this ! ” he said, gnashing his 
teeth. 

She was conquered, palpitating in his arms, and in his 
power. She felt a wanton hand straying over her. She made 
a last effort, and began to cry : ‘‘ Help ! Help ! A vampire ! 

a vampire ! ” 

ISTothing came. Djali alone was awake and bleating with 
anguish. 

“ Hush ! ” said the panting priest. 

Ail at once, as she struggled and crawled on the floor, the 
gypsy’s hand came in contact with something cold and metal- 
lic — it was Quasimodo’s whistle. She seized it with a convul- 
sive hope, raised it to her lips and blew with ail the strength 
that she had left. The whistle gave a clear, piercing sound. 

What is that ? ” said the priest. 

Almost at the same instant he felt himself raised by a 
vigorous arm. The cell was dark ; he could not distinguish 
clearly who it was that held him thus ; but he heard teeth 
chattering with rage, and there was just sufficient light scat- 
tered among the gloom to allow him to see above his head the 
blade of a large knife. 

The priest fancied that he perceived the form of Quasimodo. 
He assumed that it could be no one but he. He remembered 
to hâve stumbled, as he entered, over a bundle which was 


174 


NOTRE-DAME, 


stretched across the door on the outside. But, as the new- 
comer did not utter a word, he knew not what to think. He 
flung himself on the arm which held the knife, crying : ‘‘ Quasi- 
modo ! ” He forgot, at that moment of distress, that Quasi- 
modo was deaf. 

In a twinkling, the priest was overthrown and a leaden 
knee rested on his breast. 

From the angular imprint of that knee he recognized Quasi- 
modo ; but what was to be done ? how could he make the 
other recognize him ? the darkness rendered the deaf man 
blind. 

He was lost. The young girl, pitiless as an enraged tigress, 
did not intervene to save him. The knife was approaching 
his head; the moment was critical. Ail at once, his adver- 
sary seemed stricken with hésitation. 

No blood on her ! he said in a dull voice. 

It was, in fact, Quasimodo’s voice. 

Then the priest felt a large hand dragging him feet first ont 
of the cell ; it was there that he was to die. Fortunately for 
him, the moon had risen a few moments before. 

When they had passed through the door of the cell, its pale 
ray s fell upon the .priest’s countenance. Quasimodo looked 
him full in the face, a trembling seized him, and he released 
the priest and shrank back. 

The gyps}", who had advanced to the threshold of her cell, 
beheld with surprise their rôles abruptly changed. It was 
now the priest who menaced, Quasimodo who was the sup- 
pliant. 

The priest, who was overwhelming the deaf man with ges- 
tures of wrath and reproach, made the latter a violent sign to 
retire. 

The deaf man dropped his head, then he came and knelt at 
the gypsy^s door, — Monseigneur,’’ he said, in a grave and 
resigned voice, ^^you shall do ail that you please afterwards, 
but kill me first.” 

So saying, he presented his knife to the priest. The priest, 
beside himself, was about to seize it. But the young girl was 
quicker than he j she wrenched the knife from Quasimodo’s 


CONTINUATION OF THE KEY TO THE RED DOOR. 175 

hands and burst into a frantic laugb, — ^^Approach/’ sbe said 
to the priest. 

She held the blade high. The priest remained undecided. 
She would certainly hâve struck him. 

Then she added with a pitiless expression, well aware that 
she was about to pierce the priesVs heart with thousands of 
red-hot irons, — 

‘^Ah ! I know that Phœbus is not dead ! 

The priest overturned Quasimodo on the floor with a kick, 
and, qnivering with rage, darted back under the vault of the 
staircase. 

When he was gone, Quasimodo picked up the whistle which 
had just saved the gypsy. 

It was getting rusty,’’ he said, as he handed it back to her ; 
then he left her alone. 

The young girl, deeply agitated by this violent scene, fell 
back exhausted on her bed, and began to sob and weep. Her 
horizon was becoming gloomy once more. 

The priest had groped his way back to his cell. 

It was settled. Dom Claude was jealous of Quasimodo ! 

He repeated with a thoughtful air his fatal words : No 
one shall hâve her.^’ 



•«1 


♦ 



BOOK TENTH. 


CHAPTEE. I. 

GRINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOD IDEAS IN SUCCESSION. RUE 

DES BERNARDINS. 

As soon as Pierre Gringoire had seen how this whole affair 
was turning, and that there would decidedly be the rope, 
hanging, and other disagreeable things for the principal per- 
sonages in this comedy, he had not cared to identify himself 
with the matter further. The ontcasts with whom he had 
remained, reflecting that, after ail, it was the best company in 
Paris, — the ontcasts had continued to interest themselves in 
behalf of the gypsy. He had thought it very simple on the 
part of people who had, like herself, nothing else in prospect 
but Charmolue and Torterue, and who, unlike himself, did not 
gallop through the régions of imagination between the wings 
of Pegasus. Prom their remarks, he had learned that his wife 
of the broken crock had taken refuge in Notre-Dame, and he 
was very glad of it. But he felt no temptation to go and see 
her there. He meditated occasionally on the little goat, and 
that was ail. Moreover, he was busy executing feats of strength 
during the day for his living, and at night he was engaged 
in composing a memorial against the Bishop of Paris, for he 
remembered having been drenched by the wheels of his mills, 
and he cherished a grudge against him for it. He also occu- 

177 


178 


NOTRE-DAME. 


pied himself with annotating tlie fine work of Baudry-le- 
Rouge, Bishop of Noyon and Tournay, De Cupa Fetrarum^ 
which liad given him a violent passion for architecture, an 
inclination which had replaced in his heart his passion for 
hermeticism, of which it was, moreover, only a natural corol- 
lary, since there is an intimate relation hetween hermeticism 
and masonry. Gringoire had passed from the love of an idea 
to the love of the form of that idea. 

One day he had halted near Saint Germain-l’Auxerrois, at 
the corner of a mansion called For-l’Evêque ” (the Bisfiop’s 
Tribunal), which stood opposite another called For-le-Roi ’’ 
(the King’s Tribunal). At this For-l’Evêque, there was a 
charming chapel of the fourteenth century, whose apse was on 
the Street. Gringoire was devoutly examining its exterior 
sculptures. He was in one of those moments of egotistical, 
exclusive, suprême, enjoyment when the artist beholds noth- 
ing in the world but art, and the world in art. Ail at once he 
feels a hand laid gravely on his shoulder. He turns round. 
It was his old friend, his former master, monsieur the arch- 
deacon. 

He was stupefied. It was a long time since he had seen the 
archdeacon, and Dom Claude was one of those solemn and im- 
passioned men, a meeting with whom always upsets the equi- 
librium of a sceptical philosopher. 

The archdeacon maintained silence for several minutes, dur- 
ing which Gringoire had time to observe him. He found Dom 
Claude greatly changed ; pale as a winter’s morning, with hollow 
eyes, and hair almost white. The priest broke the silence at 
length, by saying, in a tranquil but glacial tone, — 

How do you do, Master Pierre ? 

My health ? replied Gringoire. Eh ! eh ! one can say 
both one thing and another on that score. Still, it is good, on 
the whole. I take not too much of anything. You know, 
master, that the secret of keeping well, according to Hippo- 
crates ; id est : cïbi, potus, somni, venus, omnia moderata sint” 
So you hâve no care. Master Pierre ? ” resumed the arch- 
deacon, gazing intently at Gringoire. 

Noue, i’ faith ! ’’ 


GRINGOIRE BAS MANY GOOD IDEAS. 


179 


And what are you doing now ? ” 

You see, master. I am examining the chiselling of these 
stones, and the manner in whicli yonder bas-relief is thrown 
ont.” 

Tbe priest began to smile witb that bitter smile wbich raises 
only one corner of tbe mouth. 

“ And that amuses you ? ” 

’Tis paradise ! ’’ exclaimed Gringoire. And leaning over 
the sculptures with the fascinated air of a demonstrator of 
liviùg phenomena : Do you not think, for instance, that yon 
metamorphosis in bas-relief is executed with much adroitness, 
delicacy and patience ? Observe that slender column. Around 
what capital hâve you seen foliage more tender and better 
caressed by the chisel. Here are three raised bosses of J ean 
Maillevin. They are not the finest Works of this great master. 
ISTevertheless, the naïvete, the sweetness of the faces, the gay- 
ety of the attitudes and draperies, and that inexplicable charm 
which is mingled with ail the defects, render the little figures 
very diverting and délicate, perchance, even too much so. You 
think that it is not diverting ? ” 

“ Yes, certainly ! ” said the priest. 

And if you were to see the interior of the chapel ! ” re- 
sumed the poet, with his garrulous enthusiasm. “Carvings 
everywhere. ’Tis as thickly clustered as the head of a cab- 
bage ! The apse is of a very devout, and so peculiar a fashion 
that I hâve never beheld anything like it elsewhere ! 

Dom Claude interrupted him, — 

You are happy, then ?’ ’ 

Gringoire replied warmly, — 

On my honor, yes ! Dirst I loved women, then animais. 
Now I love stones. They are quite as amusing as women and 
animais, and less treacherous.’^ 

The priest laid his hand on his brow It was his habituai 
gesture. 

Really ? ’’ 

Stay ! ” said Gringoire, one has one’s pleasures ! ” He 
took the arm of the priest, who let him hâve his way, and 
made him enter the staircase turret of For-TEvêque. Here 


180 


NOTBE-DAME. 


is a staircase ! every time that I see it I am happy. It is of 
the simplest and rarest manner of steps in Paris. Ail the 
steps are bevelled underneath. Its beauty and simplicity con- 
sist in the interspacing of both, being a foot or more wide, 
which are interlaced, interlocked; fitted together, enchained 
enchased, interlined one upon another, and bite into each 
other in a manner that is truly firm and graceful.’^ 

And yon desire nothing ? ” 

“ And yon regret nothing ? 

^^Neither regret nor desire. I hâve arranged my mode of 
life.’’ 

What men arrange/’ said Claude, things disarrange.” 

“ I am a Pyrrhonian philosopher,” replied Gringoire, “ and I 
hold ail things in equilibrium.” 

And how do yon earn your living ? ” 

I still make épies and tragédies now and then ; but that 
which brings me in most is the industry with which yon are 
acquainted, master ; carrying pyramids of chairs in my teeth.” 

“ The trade is but a rough one for a philosopher.” 

’Tis still equilibrium,” said Gringoire. When one bas 
an idea, one encounters it in everything.” 

I know that,” replied the archdeacon. 

After a silence, the priest resumed, — 

“ You are, nevertheless, tolerably poor ? ” 

Poor, yes ; unhappy, no.” 

At that moment, a trampling of horses was heard, and our 
two interlocutors beheld defiling at the end of the Street, a 
company of the king’s unattached archers, their lances borne 
high, an officer at their head. The cavalcade was brilliant, 
and its march resounded on the pavement. 

'^How you gaze at that officer!” said Gringoire, to the 
archdeacon. 

Because I think I recognize him.” 

What do you call him ? ” 

''1 think,” said Claude, 'Hhat his naine is Phœbus de 
Châteaupers.” 

''Phœbus! A curious name ! There is also a Phœbus, 


GRINGOIHE BAS MAN Y GOOB IDE A S. 181 

Comte de Foix. I remember having kuown a wencb wbo 
swore only by the naine of Phœbus.” 

Corne away from bere,” said tbe priest. 1 bave soine- 
tbing to say to you.” 

Froin tbe moment of tbat troop’s passing, some agitation 
bad pierced tbrougb tbe arcbdeacon’s glacial envelope. He 
walked on. Gringoire followed bim, being accnstomed to 
obey bim, like ail wbo bad once approacbed tbat man so full 
of ascendency. Tbey reacbed in silence tbe Eue des Bernard- 
ins, wbicb was nearly deserted. Here Dom Claude paused. 

“ Wbat bave y ou to say to me, master ? Gringoire asked 
bim. 

‘‘ Do you not tbink tbat tbe dress of tbose cavaliers wbom 
we bave just seen is far bandsomer tban yours and mine ? ’’ 

Gringoire tossed bis bead. 

faitb ! I love better my red and yellow jerkin, tban 
tbose. scales of iron and Steel. A fine pleasure to produce, 
wben you walk, tbe same noise as tbe Quay of Old Iron, in an 
eartbquake ! 

So, Gringoire, you bave never cberisbed envy for tbose 
bandsome fellows in tbeir military doublets ? ” 

Envy for wbat, monsieur tbe arcbdeacon ? tbeir strengtb, 
tbeir armor, tbeir discipline ? Better pbilosopby and inde- 
pendence in rags. I prefer to be tbe bead of a fly ratber tban 
tbe tail of a lion.’^ 

Tbat is singular,’’ said tbe priest dreamily. Yet a band- 
some uniform is a beautiful tbing.” 

Gringoire, perceiving tbat be was in a pensive mood, quitted 
bim to go and admire tbe porcb of a neigbboring bouse. He 
came back clapping bis bands. 

If you were less engrossed witb tbe fine clothes of men of 
war, monsieur the arcbdeacon, I would entreat you to corne 
and see tbis door. I bave always said tbat tbe bouse of tbe 
Sieur Aubry bad the most superb entrance in the world.’’ 

Pierre Gringoire,’’ said tbe arcbdeacon, Wbat bave you 
done witb tbat little gypsy dancer ? ” 

La Esmeralda ? You change the conversation very ab- 
ruptly.” 


182 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ Was she not your wife ? 

Yes, by virtue of a broken crock. We were to bave four 
years of it. By the way/’ added Gringoire, looking at the 
archdeacon in a balf bantering way, “ are you still tbinking of 
ber ? ” 

And you tbink of ber no longer ? ’’ 

Very little. I bave so many tbings. Good beavens, bow 
pretty tbat little goat was ! ” 

“ Had sbe not saved your life ? 

’Tis true, pardieu ! 

Well, wbat bas become of ber ? Wbat bave you done 
witb ber ? 

I cannot tell you. I believe tbat tbey bave hanged ber.’’ 

You believe so ? ” 

I am not sure. Wben I saw tbat tbey wanted to bang 
people, I retired from tbe game.” 

Tbat is ail you know of it ? ” 

^‘Wait a bit. I was told tbat sbe bad taken refuge in 
Notre-Dame, and tbat sbe was safe tbere, and I am deligbted 
to bear it, and I bave not been able to discover wbetber tbe 
goat was saved witb ber, and tbat is ail I know.” 

I will tell you more,” cried Dom Claude ; and bis voice, 
bitberto low, slow, and almost indistinct, turned to tbunder. 

Sbe bas in fact, taken refuge in Notre-Dame. But in three 
days justice will reclaim ber, and sbe will be banged on tbe 
Grève. Tbere is a decree of parliament.” 

^^Tbat’s annoying,” said Gringoire. 

Tbe priest, in an instant, became cold and calm again. 

And wbo tbe de vil,” resumed tbe poet, bas amused bim- 
self witb soliciting a decree of réintégration ? Wby couldn’t 
tbey leave parliament in peace ? Wbat barm does it do if a 
poor girl takes shelter under tbe flying buttresses of Notre- 
Dame, beside tbe swallows’ nests ? ” 

“ Tbere are satans in tbis world,” remarked tbe arcbdeacon. 

’Tis devilisb badly done,” observed Gringoire. 

Tbe arcbdeacon resumed after a silence, — 

So, sbe saved your life ? ” 

Among my good friends tbe outcasts. A little more or a 


GEINGOIRE HAS MANY GOOB IDEAS. 183 

little less and I should hâve been hanged. They would hâve 
been sorry for it to-day/’ 

Would not y ou like to do something for her ? 

I ask nothing better, Dom Claude ; but what if I entangle 
myself in some villanous affair ? ’’ 

What matters it ? ” 

^^Bah! what matters it? You are good, master, that y ou 
are ! I hâve two great works already begun.” 

The priest smote his brow. In spite of the calm which he 
affected, a violent gesture betrayed his internai convulsions 
from time to time. 

How is she to be saved ? ” 

Qringoire said to him; Master, I will reply to you; iZ 
padelt, which means in Turkish, ^ God is our hope.’ ” 

“ How is she to be saved ? ’’ repeated Claude dreamily. 
Gringoire smote his brow in his turn. 

^^Listen, master. I hâve imagination; I will devise expéd- 
ients for you. What if one were to ask her pardon from the 
king ? ” 

“ Of Louis XI. ! A pardon ! ” 

“ Why not ? ’’ 

To take the tiger’s bone from him ! ’’ 

Gringoire began to seek fresh expédients. 

Well, stay ! Shall I address to the midwives a request 
accompanied by the déclaration that the girl is with child ! ” 
This made the priest’s hollow eye flash. 

With child ! knave ! do you know anything of this ? ” 
Gringoire was alarmed by his air. He hastened to say. 
Oh, no, not I ! Our marriage was a real forîsmaritagîum, I 
stayed outside. But one might obtain a respite, ail the same.” 

Madness ! Infamy ! Hold your tongue ! ” 

“You do wrong to get angry,’’ muttered Gringoire. “One 
obtains a respite ; that does no harm to any one, and allows 
the midwives, who are poor women, to earn forty deniers 
parisis.” 

The priest was not listening to him ! 

“ But she must leave that place, nevertheless ! ’’ he mur- 
mured, “the decree is to be executed within three day?. 


184 : 


N0TBE-1)AME. 


Moreover, there will be no decree; tbat Quasimodo ! Women 
bave very depraved tastes ! ’’ He raised Ms voice ; “ Master 
Pierre, I bave reflected well ; tbere is but one means of safety 
for ber/’ 

Wbat ? I see none myself.” 

^^Listen, Master Pierre, remember tbat you owe your life 
fco ber. I will tell you my idea frankly. Tbe cburcb is 
watcbed nigbt and day ; only tbose are allowed to corne ont, 
wbo bave been seen to enter. Hence you can enter. You 
will corne. I will lead you to ber. You will change clotbes 
witb ber. Sbe will take your doublet; you will take ber 
petticoat.” 

^‘So far, it goes well,” remarked tbe philosopher, ^^and 
tben ? ” 

And tben ? sbe will go forth in your garments ; you will 
remain witb bers. You will be banged, perbaps, but sbe will 
be saved.” 

Gringoire scratched bis ear, witb a very serious air. 
“ Stay ! ” said he, tbat is an idea which would never bave 
occurred to me unaided.” 

At Dom Claude’s proposition, tbe open and benign face of 
tbe poet bad abruptly clouded over, like a smiling Italian 
landscape, wben an unlucky squall cornes up and dasbes a 
cloud across tbe sun. 

Well ! Gringoire, wbat say you to tbe means ? ” 
say, master, tbat I-sball not be banged, percbance, but 
tbat I sball be banged indubitably. 

“ Tbat concerns us not.” 

The deuce ! ” said Gringoire. 

^‘She bas saved your life. ’Tis a debt tbat you are dis- 
charging.” 

Tbere are a great many others wbich I do not discharge.” 

Master Pierre, it is absolutely necessary.” 

The arcbdeacon spoke imperiously.” 

‘^Listen, Dom Claude,” replied tbe poet in utter conster- 
nation. You cling to tbat idea, and you are wrong. I do 
not see wby I sbould get myself banged in some one else’s 
place.” 


GRINGOIRE HA8 MANY GOOR IBEA8. 185 

What hâve you, then, which attaches you so strongly to 
life ? 

Oh ! a thousand reasons ! 

“ What reasonsj if you please ? 

“ What ? The air, the sky, the morning, the evening, the 
moonlight, my good friends the thieves, our jeers with the 
old hags of go-betweens, the fine architecture of Paris to 
study, three great books to make, one of them being against 
the bishops and his mills ; and how can I tell ail ? Anaxa- 
goras said that he was in the world to admire the sun. And 
then, from morning till night, I hâve the happiness of passing 
ail my days with a man of genius, who is myself, which is 
-very agreeable.’’ 

A head fit for a mule bell ! ’’ muttered the archdeacon. 
“ Oh ! tell me who preserved for you that life which you 
render so charming to yourself ? To whom do you owe it 
that you breathe that air, behold that sky, and can still 
amuse your lark’s mind with your whimsical nonsense and 
madness ? Where would you be, had it not been for her ? 
Do you then desire that she through whom you are alive, 
should die ? that she should die, that beautiful, sweet, adora- 
ble créature, who is necessary to the light of the world and 
more divine than God, while you, half wise, and half fool, 
a vain sketch of something, a sort of vegetable, which thinks 
that it walks, and thinks that it thinks, you will continue to 
live with the life which you hâve stolen from her, as useless 
as a candie in broad daylight ? Corne, hâve a little pity, 
Gringoire ; be générons in your turn ; it was she who set the 
example/’ 

The priest was vehement. Gringoire listened to him at first 
with an undecided air, then he became touched, and wound up 
with a grimace which made his pallid face resemble that of a 
new-born infant with an attack of the colic; 

You are pathetic ! ” said he, wiping away a tear. Well ! 
I will think about it. That’s a queer idea of yours. — After 
ail,” he continued after a pause, “ who knows ? perhaps they 
will not hang me. He who becomes betrothed does not always 
marry. When they find me in that little lodging so grotesquely 


186 


NOTRE-DAME. 


muffled in petticoat and coif, perchance thej will burst witb 
laughter. And then, if they do hang me, — well ! the halter 
is as good a death as any. ’Tis a death worthy of a sage who 
bas wavered ail his life ; a death. which is neither flesh nor 
fish, like the mind of a véritable sceptic ; a death ail 
stamped with Pyrrhonism and hésitation, which holds the 
middle station betwixt heaven and earth, which leaves you 
in suspense. ’Tis a philosopheras death, and I was destined 
thereto, perchance. It is magnificent to die as one has 
lived.” 

The priest interrupted him : Is it agreed.” 

What is death, after ail ? ” pursued Gringoire with exalta- 
tion. disagreeable moment, a toll-gate, the passage of 

little to nothingness. Some one having asked Cercidas, the 
Megalopolitan, if he were willing to die : ^ Why not ? ’ he 
replied; ^for after my death I shall see those great men, 
Pythagoras among the philosophers, Hecatæus among histo- 
rians, Homer among poets, Olympus among musicians.’ ” 

The archdeacon gave him his hand : It is settled, then ? 
You will corne to-morrow ? ” 

This gesture recalled Gringoire to reality. 

^^Ah ! i’ faith no ! ” he said in the tone of a man just waking 
up. ^‘Behanged! ’tis too absurd. I will not.” 

^^Farewell, then!” and the archdeacon added between his 
teeth : l’il find you again ! ” 

“ I do not want that devil of a man to find me,” thought 
Gringoire ; and he ran after Dom. Claude. Stay, monsieur 
the archdeacon, no ill-feeling between old friends ! You take 
an interest in that girl, my wife, I mean, and ’tis well. You 
hâve devised a scheme to get her out of Notre-Dame, but your 
way is extremely disagreeable to me, Gringoire. If I had 
only another one myself! I beg to say that a luminous 
inspiration has just occurred to me. If I possessed an expé- 
dient for extricating her from a dilemma, without compromis- 
ing my own neck to the extent of a single running knot, what 
would you say to it ? Will not that suffice you ? Is it abso- 
lutely necessary that I should be hanged, in order that you 
may be content ? ” 


GRINGOIRE HAS HANY GOOD IDEAS. 187 

The priest tore out the buttons of his cassock with impa- 
tience : Stream of words ! What is jour plan ? ” 

“ Yes/’ resumed Gringoire, talking to himself and touching 
his nose with his forefinger in sign of méditation, — that’s 
it ! — The thieves are brave fellows ! — The tribe of Egypt 
love her ! — They will rise at the first word ! — hTothing 
easier ! — A sudden stroke. — Under cover of the disorder, 
they will easily carry her off ! — Beginning to-morrow evening. 
They will ask nothing better. 

The plan ! speak,” cried the archdeacon shaking him. 

Gringoire turned majestically towards him: “Leave me! 
You see that I am composing.’^ He meditated for a few 
moments more, then began to clap his hands over his thought, 
crying : ^^Admirable ! success is sure ! ’’ 

The plan ! ” repeated Claude in wrath. 

Gringoire was radiant. 

Corne, that I may tell you that very softly. ’Tis a truly 
gallant counter-plot, which will extricate us ail from the mat- 
ter. Pardieu, it must be admitted that I am no fool.’^ 

He broke off. 

Oh, by the way ! is the little goat with the wench ? 

“ Yes. The de vil take you ! ’’ 

They would hâve hanged it also, would they not ? ’’ 

What is that to me ? 

“Yes, they would hâve hanged it. They hanged a sow last 
month. The headsman loveth that ; he eats the beast after- 
wards. Take my pretty Djali ! Poor little lamb ! ’’ 

“Malédiction!’’ exclaimed Dom Claude. “You are the 
executioner. What means of safety hâve you found, knave ? 
Must your idea be extracted with the forceps ? ” 

“Very fine, master, this is it.” 

Gringoire bent his head to the archdeacon’s head and spoke 
to him in a very low voice, casting an uneasy glance the while 
from one end to the other of the Street, though no one was 
passing. When he had finished, Dom Claude took his hand 
and said coldly : “ ’Tis well. Parewell until to-morrow.” 

“Until to-morrow,” repeated Gringoire. And, while the 
archdeacon was disappearing in one direction, he set off in 


188 


NOTBE-DAME. 


thé other, saying to himself in a low voice: ^^Here^s a 
grand affair, Monsieur Pierre Gringoire. Never mind ! ’Tis 
not written that because one is of small account one should 
take fright at a great enterprise. Bitou carried a great bull 
on bis shoulders ; the water-wagtails, the warblers, and the 
buntings traverse the ocean/^ 




CHAPTER II. 

TURN VAGABOND. 

On re-entering the cloister, the archdeacon found at the door 
of his cell his brother Jehan du Moulin, who was waiting for 
hiin, and who had beguiled the tedium of waiting by drawing 
on the wall with a bit of charcoal, a profile of his elder 
brother, enriched with a monstrous nose. 

Dom Claude hardly looked at his brother; his thoughts 
were elsewhere. That merry scamp’s face whose beaming had 
so often restored serenity to the priest’s sombre physiognomy, 
was now powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense 
every day over that corrupted, mephitic, and stagnant soûl. 

“Brother,’^ said Jehan timidly, “I am corne to see you.’’ 

The archdeacon did not even raise his eyes. 

‘^What then?’^ 

“ Brother,” resumed the hypocrite, you are so good to me, 
and you give me such wise counsels that I always return to 
you.” 

What next ? ” 

Alas ! brother, you were perfectly right when you said to 
me, — Jehan! Jehan! cessât doctorum doctrina, discipulorum 
disciplina. Jehan, be wise. Jehan, be learned. Jehan, pass 
not the night outside of the college without lawful occasion 
and due leave of the master. Cudgel not the Picards : noli^ 
Joa7ines, verherare Picardes. Rot not like an unlettered ass, 
quasi asinus illitteratus, on the straw seats of the school. 
Jehan, allow yourself to be punished at the discrétion of the 

189 


190 


NOTRE-DAME. 


master. Jehan go every evening to chapel, and sing there an 
anthem with verse and orison to Madame the glorious Virgin 
]y[ary. — Alas ! what excellent advice was that ! 

And then ? ’’ 

Brother, y ou behold a culprit, a criminal, a wretch, a liber- 
tine, a man of enormities ! My dear brother, Jehan hath made 
of your counsels straw and dung to trample under foot. I 
hâve been well chastised for it, and God is extraordinarily just. 
As long as I had money, I feasted, I lead a mad and joyous 
life. Oh ! how ugly and crabbed behind is debauch which is 
so charming in front ! Now I hâve no longer a blank ; I hâve 
sold my napery, my shirt and my towels ; no more merry life ! 
The beautiful candie is extinguished and I hâve henceforth, 
only a wretched tallow dip which smokes in my nose. The 
wenches jeer at me. I drink water. I am overwhelmed with 
remorse and with creditors. 

The rest ? ’’ said the archdeacon. 

Alas ! my very dear brother, I should like to settle down 
to a better life. I corne to you full of contrition, I am péni- 
tent. I make my confession. I beat my breast violently. 
You are quite right in wishing that I should some day become 
a licentiate and sub-monitor in the college of Torchi. At the 
présent moment I feel a magnificent vocation for that profes- 
sion. But I hâve no more ink and I must buy some ; I hâve 
no more paper, I hâve no more books, and I must buy some. 
For this purpose, I am greatly in need of a little money, and 
I corne to you, brother, with my heart full of contrition.’^ 

Is that ali ? ” 

Yes,” said the scholar. A little money.” 

I hâve none.” 

Then the scholar said, with an air which was both grave and 
resolute : Well, brother, I am sorry to be obliged to tell you 
that very fine offers and propositions are being made to me in 
another quarter. You will not give me any money ? No. In 
that case I shall become a professional vagabond.” 

As he uttered these monstrous words, he assumed the mien 
of Ajax, expecting to see the lightnings descend upon his 
head. 


TUBN AG AB ON B. 


191 


The archdeacon said coldly to him, — 

Become a vagabond.’’ 

Jehan made him a deep bow, and descended the cloister 
',tairs, whistling. 

At the moment when he was passing through the courtyard 
of the cloister, beneath his brother’s window, he heard that 
window open, raised his eyes and beheld the archdeacon’s 
severe head emerge. 

“ Go to the devil ! ” said Dom Claude ; “ here is the last 
money which you will get from me ? ” 

At the same time, the priest flung Jehan a purse, which 
gave the scholar a big bump on the forehead, and with which 
Jehan retreated, both vexed and content, like a dog who had 
been stoned with marrow bones. 




CHAPTEE, IIL 

LONG LIVE MIRTH. 

The reader has probably not forgotten that a part of tbe 
Cour de Miracles was enclosed by the ancient wall whicli sur- 
rounded the city, a goodly number of whose towers had begun, 
even at that epoch, to fall to ruin. One of these towers had 
been converted into a pleasure resort by the vagabonds. There 
was a drain-shop in the underground s tory, and the rest in the 
upper stories. This was the most lively, and consequently 
the most hideous, point of the whole outcast den. It was a 
sort of monstrous hive, which buzzed there night and day. 
At night, when the reinainder of the beggar horde slept, when 
there was no longer a window lighted in the dingy façades of 
the Place, when not a cry was any longer to be heard proceed- 
ing from those innuinerable familles, those ant-hills of thieves, 
of wenches, and stolen or bastard ehildren, the merry tower 
was still recognizable by the noise which it made, by the scarlet 
light which, flashing simultaneously from the air-holes, the 
Windows, the fissures in the cracked walls, escaped, so to 
speak, from its every pore. 

The cellar then, was the dram-shop. The descent to it was 
through a low door and by a staircase as steep as a classic 
Alexandrine. Over the door, by way of a sign there hung a 
marvellous daub, representing new sous and dead chickens, * 
with this pun below ; Aux sonneurs pour les trépassés^ — The 
wringers for the dead. 

* Sols neufs : poulets tués. 


192 


LONG LIVE MIRTH. 


193 


One evening when the curfew was sounding from ail the 
belfries in Paris, the sergeants of the watch might hâve oh- 
served, had it heen granted to them to enter the formidable 
Court of Miracles, that more tumult than usual was in prog- 
ress in the vagabonds’ tavern, that more drinking was being 
done, and louder swearing. Outside in the Place, there were 
many groups conversing in low tones, as when some great 
plan is being framed, and here and there a knave crouching 
down engaged in sharpening a villanous iron blade on a 
paving-stone. 

Meanwhile, in the tavern itself, wine and gaming offered 
such a powerful diversion to the ideas which occupied the 
vagabonds’ lair that evening, that it would hâve been difficult 
to divine from the remarks of the drinkers, what was the mat- 
ter in hand. They merely wore a gayer air than was their 
wont, and some weapon could be seen glittering between the 
legs of each of them, — a sickle, an axe, a big two-edged sword 
or the hook of an old hackbut. 

The room, circular in form, was very spacious ; but the 
tables were so thickly set and the drinkers so numerous, that 
ail that the tavern contained, men, women, benches, beer-jugs, 
ail that were drinking, ail that were sleeping, ail that were 
playing, the well, the lame, seemed piled up pell-mell, with as 
much order and harmony as a heap of oyster shells. There 
were a few tallow dips lighted on the tables ; but the real 
luminary of this tavern, that which played the part in this 
dram-shop of the chandelier of an opéra house, was the lire. 
This cellar was so damp that the lire was never allowed to go 
ont, even in midsummer ; an immense chimney with a sculpt- 
ured mantel, ail bristling with heavy iron andirons and cooking 
utensils, with one of those huge lires of mixed wood and peat 
which at night, in village streets make the reflection of forge 
Windows stand ont so red on the opposite walls. A big dog 
gravely seated in the ashes was turning a spit loaded with 
méat before the coals. 

Great as was the confusion, after the first glance one could 
distinguish in that multitude, three principal groups which 
thronged around three personages already known to the reader. 


194 


NOTRE-DAME. 


One of tliese personages, fantastically accoutred in many an 
oriental rag, was Mathias Hungadi Spicali, Duke of Egypt 
and Bohemia. The knave was seated on a table with his 
legs crossed, and in a loud voice was bestowing his knowledge 
of magic, both black and white, on many a gaping face which 
surrounded him. Another rabble pressed close around our old 
friend, the valiant King of Thunes, armed to the teeth. 
Clopin Trouillefou, with a very serions air and in a low voice, 
was regulating the distribution of an enormous cask of arms, 
which stood wide open in front of him and from whence 
poured ont in profusion, axes, swords, bassinets, coats of mail, 
broadswords, lance-heads, arrows, and viretons, * like apples 
and grapes from a horn of plenty. Every one took something 
from the cask, one a morion, another a long, straight sword, 
another a dagger with a cross-shaped hilt. The very children 
were arming themselves, and there were even cripples in 
bowls who, in armor and cuirass, made their way between the 
legs of the drinkers like great beetles. 

Finally, a third audience, the most noisy, the most jovial, 
and the most numerous, encumbered benches and tables, in the 
midst of which harangued and swore a flute-like voice, which 
escaped from beneath a heavy armor, complété from casque to 
spurs. The individual who had thus screwed a whole outfit 
upon his body, was so hidden by his warlike accoutrements 
that nothing was to be seen of his person save an impertinent, 
red, snub nose, a rosy mouth, and bold eyes. His belt was 
full of daggers and poniards, a huge sword on his hip, a rusted 
cross-bow at his left, and a vast jug of wine in front of him, 
without reckoning on his right, a fat wench with her bosom 
uncovered. Ail mouths around him were laughing, cursing, 
and drinking. 

Add twenty secondary groups, the waiters, male and female, 
running with jugs on their heads, gamblers squatting over 
taws, merelles, t dice, vachettes, the ardent game of tringlet, 

* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings, by 
which a rotatory motion was communicated. 

t A game played on a checker-board containing three concentric sets of 
squares, with small stones. The game consisted in getting three stones 
in a row. 


LONG LIVE MIRTH. 


195 


quarrels in one corner, kisses in anotlier, and the reader will 
hâve some idea of this whole picture, over which flickered the 
light of a great, flaming fire, which made a thousand huge and 
grotesque shadows dance over the walls of the drinking shop. 

As for the noise, it was like the inside of a bell at full 
peal. 

The dripping-pan, where crackled a rain of grease, filled 
with its continuai sputtering the intervals of these thousand 
dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment 
to the other. 

In the midst of this uproar, at the extremity of the tavern, 
on the bench inside the chimney, sat a philosopher meditating 
with his feet in the ashes and his eyes on the brands. It was 
Pierre Gringoire. 

Be quick ! make haste, arm yourselves ! we set ont on 
the march in an hour ! ” said Clopin Trouillefou to his thieves. 

A wench was humming, — 

Bonsoir mon père et ma mère, 

Les derniers couvrent le feu.” * 

Two card players were disputing, — 

Knave ! ’’ cried the reddest faced of the two, shaking his 
fist at the other; ^^l’il mark you with the club. You can 
take the place of Mistigri in the pack of cards of monseigneur 
the king.’’ 

Ugh ! ” roared a Norman, recognizable by his nasal accent ; 

we are packed in here like the saints of Caillouville ! ” 

My sons,’’ the Duke of Egypt was saying to his audience, 
in a falsetto voice, sorceresses in France go to the witches’ 
sabbath without broom sticks, or grease, or steed, merely by 
means of some magic words. The witches of Italy always 
hâve a buck waiting for them at their door. Ail are bound 
to go out through the chimney.” 

The voice of the young scamp armed from head to foot, 
dominated the uproar. 

^^Hurrah! hurrah!” he was shouting. ^‘My first day in 
armor ! Outcast ! I am an outcast. Give me something to 
* Good night, father and mother, the last cover up the fire. 


196 


NOTBE-BAME. 


drink. My friends, my name is Jehan Frollo du Moulin, and 
I am a gentleman. My opinion is that if God were a gen- 
darme, he would turn robber. Brothers, we are' about to set 
out on a fine expédition. Lay siégé to the church, burst in 
the doors, drag out the beautiful girl, save her from the 
judges, save hSr from the priests, dismantle the cloister, burn 
the bishop in his palace — ail this we will do in less time 
than it takes for a burgomaster to eat a spoonful of soup. 
Our cause is just, we will plunder Notre-Dame and that will 
be the end of it. We will hang Quasimodo. Do y ou know 
Quasimodo, ladies ? Hâve you seen him make himself breath- 
less on the big bell on a grand Pentecost festival ! Corne du 
Pere ! ’tis very fine ! One would say he was a devil mounted 
on a man. Listen to me, my friends ; I am a vagabond to the 
bottom of my heart, I am a member of the slang thief gang 
in my soûl, I was born an independent thief. I hâve been 
rich, and I hâve devoured ail my property. My mother wanted 
to make an officer of me ; my father, a sub-deacon ; my aunt, 
a councillor of inquests; my grandmother, prothonotary to 
the king ; my great aunt, a treasurer of the short robe, — and 
I hâve made myself an outcast. I said this to my father, who 
spit his curse in my face ; to my mother, who set to weeping 
and chattering, poor old lady, like yonder fagot on the and- 
irons. Long live mirth ! I am a real Bicêtre. Waitress, my 
dear, more wine. I hâve still the wherewithal to pay. I 
want no more Surène wine. It distresses my throat. l’d as 
lief, corhœuf! gargle my throat with a basket.’^ 

Meanwhile, the rabble applauded with shouts of laughter ; 
and seeing that the tumult was increasing around him, the 
scholar cried, — 

Oh ! what a fine noise ! Populi débacchantis populosa 
débacchatio ! Then he began to sing, his eye swimming in 
ecstasy, in the tone of a canon intoning vespers, Quæ cantica ! 
guæ organa ! quæ cantilenœ ! quæ melodiæ hic sine fine decan- 
tantur ! Sonant melliflua hymnorum organa, suavissima angel- 
orum melodia, cantica canticorum mira ! He broke off : 

Tavern-keeper of the devil, give me some supper ! ’’ 

There was a moment of partial silence, during which the 


LONG LIVE MIRTH. I97 

sharp voice of the Duke of Egypt rose, as lie gave instruc- 
tions to his Bohemians. 

‘‘ The weasel is called Adrune ; the fox, Blue-foot, or the 
Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the 
bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome con- 
fers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things. 
Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black 
velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather 
holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. ’Tis the 
démon Sidragasum who hath the power to make wenches 
dance stark naked.’^ 

‘^By the mass!’’ interrupted Jehan, should like to be 
the démon Sidragasum.” 

Meanwhile, the vagabonds continued to arm themselves and 
whisper at the other end of the dram-shop. 

“ That poor Esmeralda ! ” said a Bohemian. She is our 
sister. She must be taken away from there,” 

Is she still at Kotre-Dame ? ” went on a merchant with 
the appearance of a Jew. 

“ Yes, pardieu ! ” 

“Wellî comrades!” exclaimed the merchant, ^Go Notre- 
Dame ! So much the better, since there are in the chapel of 
Saints Eéréol and Ferrution two statues, the one of John the 
Baptist, the other of Saint-Antoine, of solid gold, weighing 
together seven marks of gold and fifteen estellins ; and the 
pedestals are of silver-gilt, of seventeen marks, five ounces. 
I know that ; I am a goldsmith.” 

Here they served Jehan with his supper. As he threw 
himself back on the bosom of the wench beside him, he 
exclaimed, — 

^^By Saint Voult-de-Lucques, whom people call Saint 
Goguelu, I am perfectly happy. I hâve before me a fool 
who gazes at me with the smooth face of an archduke. Here 
is one on my left whose teeth are so long that they hide his 
chin. And then, I am like the Marshal de Gié at the siégé 
of Pontoise, I hâve my right resting on a hillock. Ventre- 
Mahom ! Comrade ! you hâve the air of a merchant of tennis- 
ballsj and you corne and sit yourself beside me! I am u 


198 


NOTBE-DAME. 


nobleman, my friend ! Trade is incompatible witb nobility. 
Get ont of that! Holà bé! You others, don’t figbt ! Wbat, 
Baptiste Croque-Oison, you who bave sucb a fine nose are 
going to risk it against tbe big fists of tbat lout ! Tool ! Non 
cuiquam datum est habere nasum — not every one is favored 
witb a nose. You are really divine, Jacqueline Eonge- 
Oreille ! ^tis a pity tbat you bave no bair ! Holà ! my name 
is Jeban Frollo, and my brotber is an arcbdeacon. May tbe 
devil fly off witb bim ! Ail tbat I tell you is tbe trutb. 
In turning vagabond, I bave gladly renounced tbe balf of a 
bouse situated in paradise, wbicb my brotber bad promised 
me. Dimidiam domnm in paradiso. I quote tbe text. I 
bave a fief in tbe Eue Tirecbappe, and ail tbe women are in 
love witb me, as true as Saint Èloy was an excellent gold- 
smitb, and tbat tbe five trades of tbe good city of Paris are 
tbe tanners, tbe tawers, tbe makers of cross-belts, tbe purse- 
makers, and tbe sweaters, and tbat Saint Laurent was burnt 
witb eggsbells. I swear to you, comrades. 

‘‘Que je ne beuvrai de piment, 

Devant un an, si je cy ment.* 

“’Tis moonligbt, my charmer ; see yonder tbrougb tbe win- 
dow bow tbe wind is tearing tbe clouds to tatters ! Even tbus 
will I do to y oui* gorget. — Wencbes, wipe tbe cbildren’s noses 
and snufî tbe candies. — Cbrist and Mabom ! Wbat am I eat- 
ing bere, J upiter ? Obé ! innkeeper ! tbe bair wbicb is not 
on tbe beads of your bussies one finds in your omelettes. Old 
woman ! I like bald omelettes. May tbe devil confound you ! 
— A fine hostelry of Beelzebub, where tbe bussies comb tbeir 
beads witb tbe forks ! 

“ Et je n’ai moi, 

Par la sang-Dieu I 
Ni foi, ni loi, 

Ni feu, ni lieu. 

Ni roi, 

Ni Dieu.”t 

* That I will drink no spiced and honeyed wine for a year, if I am 
lying now. 

t And by the blood of God, I hâve neither faith nor law, nor fire nor 
dwelling-place, nor king nor God. 


LONG LIVE MIBTH. 


199 


In the meantime, Clopin Trouillefou had finished the dis- 
tribution of arms. He approached Gringoire, wbo appeared 
to be plunged in a profound revery, witb bis feet on an 
andiron. 

^‘Friend Pierre/’ said the King of Tbunes, ^^what tbe devil 
are you tbinking about ? ” 

Gringoire turned to bim witb a melancboly smile. 

^‘I love tbe fire, my dear lord. Not for tbe trivial reason 
tbat fire warms tbe feet or cooks our soup, but because it bas 
sparks. Sometimes I pass wbole bours in watcbing tbe sparks. 
I discover a thousand tbings in tbose stars wbicb are sprinkled 
over tbe black background of tbe beartb. Tbose stars are also 
worlds.” 

“Tbunder, if I understand you!” said tbe outcast. ^^Do 
you know wbat o’clock it is ? ” 

I do not know,” replied Gringoire. 

Clopin approached tbe Duke of Egypt. 

‘‘ Comrade Mathias, the time we bave cbosen is not a good 
one. King Louis XI. is said to be in Paris.” 

^^Anotber reason for snatcbing our sister from bis claws,” 
replied tbe old Bobemian. 

You speak like a man, Mathias,” said tbe King of Thunes. 
^^Moreover, we will act promptly. Ko résistance is to be 
feared in the churcb. Tbe canons are hares, and we are in 
force. The people of the parliament will be well balked 
to-morrow wben tbey corne to seek ber ! Guts of the pope ! I 
don’t want them to bang the pretty girl ! ” 

Clopin quitted tbe dram-sbop. 

Meanwhile, Jehan was shouting in a hoarse voice : 

I eat, I drink, I am drunk, I am Jupiter ! Eb ! Pierre, 
the Slaughterer, if you look at me like tbat again, l’il fillip 
tbe dust off your nose for you.” 

Gringoire, torn from bis méditations, began to watcb tbe 
wild and noisy scene wbicb surrounded bim, muttering be- 
tween bis teetb ; ^‘Luxurîosa res vinum et tumultuosa ehrietas. 
Alas ! wbat good reason I bave not to drink, and bow excel- 
lently spoke Saint-Benoit : ^ Vinum apostatare facit etiam sap- 
lentes ! ’ ” 


200 


NOTRE-DAME. 


At that moment, Clopin returned and shouted in a voice of 
thunder : Midnight ! 

At this Word, which produced the effect of the call to boot 
and saddle on a régiment at a hait, ail the outcasts, men, 
women, children, rushed in a mass from the tavern, with great 
noise of arms and old iron implements. 

The moon was obscured. 

The Cour des Miracles was entirely dark. There was not a 
single light. One could make ont there a throng of men and 
women conversing in low tones. They could be heard buz- 
zing, and agleam of ail sorts of weapons was visible in the 
iarkness. Clopin mounted a large stone. 

To your ranks. Argot ! he cried. Fall into line, 
Egypt ! Form ranks, Galilee ! ’’ 

A movement began in the darkness. The immense multi- 
tude appeared to form in a column. After a few minutes, the 
King of Thunes raised his voice once more, — 

‘‘Now, silence to march through Paris! The password is, 

‘ Little sword in pocket ! ^ The torches will not be lighted till 
we reach î^otre-Dame ! Porward, march ! ” 

Ten minutes later, the cavaliers of the watch fled in terror 
before a long procession of black and silent men which was 
descending towards the Pont au Change, through the tortuous 
streets which pierce the close-built neighborhood of the mar- 
kets in every direction. 


* Men of the brotherhood slang : thieves. 



CHAPTER IV. 

AN AWKWARD FEIEND. 

That night, Quasimodo did not sleep. He had just made 
Pis last round of the church. He had not noticed, that at the 
moment when he was closing the doors, the archdeacon had 
passed close to him and betrayed some displeasure on seeing 
him bolting and barring with care the enormous iron locks 
which gave to their large leaves the solidity of a wall. Dom 
Claude’s air was even more preoccupied than usual. Moreover, 
since the nocturnal adventure in the cell, he had constantly 
abused Quasimodo, but in vain did he ill treat, and even beat 
him occasionally, nothing disturbed the submission, patience, 
the devoted résignation of the faithful bellringer. He en- 
dured everything on the part of the archdeacon^ insults, 
threats, blows, without murmuring a complaint. At the most, 
he gazed uneasily after Dom Claude when the latter ascended 
the staircase of the tower ; but the archdeacon had abstained 
from presenting himself again before the gypsy’s eyes. 

On that night, accordingly, Quasimodo, after having cast a 
glance at his poor bells which he so neglected now, Jacque- 
line, Marie, and Thibauld, mounted to the summit of the 
Northern tower, and there setting his dark lanturn, well 
closed, upon the leads, he began to gaze at Paris. The 
night, as we hâve already said, was very dark. Paris which, 
Bo to speak was not lighted at that epoch, presented to the eye 

201 


202 


NOTBE-DAME. 


a confused collection of black masses, eut here and there by 
the wbitisb curve of the Seine. Quasimodo no longer saw 
any light with tbe exception of one window in a distant 
édifice, wbose vague and sombre profile was outlined well 
above tbe roofs, in tbe direction of tbe Porte Sainte- Antoine. 
Tbere also, tbere was some one awake. 

As tbe only eye of tbe bellringer peered into tbat horizon 
of mist and nigbt, be felt witbin bim an inexpressible uneasi- 
ness. Por several days be bad been upon bis gnard. He bad 
perceived men of sinister mien, wbo never took tbeir eyes 
from tbe young girbs asylum, prowling constantly about tbe 
ebureb. He fancied tbat some plot migbt be in process of 
formation against tbe unbappy refugee. He imagined tbat 
tbere existed a popular batred against ber, as against bimself, 
and tbat it was very possible tbat sometbing migbt bappen 
soon. Hence be reraained upon bis tower on tbe watcb, 

dreaming in bis dream-place,’’ as Rabelais says, witb bis eye 
directed alternately on tbe cell and on Paris, keeping faitbful 
gnard, like a good dog, witb a tbousand suspicions in bis mind. 

Ail at once, wbile be was scrutinizing tbe great city witb 
tbat eye wbicb nature, by a sort of compensation, bad made 
so piercing tbat it could almost supply tbe otber organs wbicb 
Quasimodo lacked, it seemed to bim tbat tbere was sometbing 
singular about tbe Quay de la Vieille-Pelleterie, tbat tbere 
was a movement at tbat point, tbat tbe line of tbe parapet, 
standing ont blackly against tbe wbiteness of tbe water was 
not straigbt and'tranquil, like tbat of tbe otber quay s, but 
tbat it undulated to tbe eye, like the waves of a river, or like 
the beads of a crowd in motion. 

Tbis struck bim as strange. He redoubled bis attention. 
The movement seemed to be advancing towards tbe City. 
Tbere was no light. It lasted for some time on the quay ; 
then it gradually ceased, as tbough tbat wbicb was passing 
were entering tbe interior of tbe island ; tben it stopped alto- 
getber, and tbe line of tbe quay became straigbt and motion- 
less again. 

At the moment wben Quasimodo was lost in conjectures, it 
seemed to bim tbat tbe movement bad re-appeared in tbe Rue 


AN AWKWARD FRIEND. 


203 


du Parvis, which. is prolonged into the city perpendicularly 
to the façade of Notre-Dame. At length, dense as was the 
darkness, he beheld the head of a column debouch froni that 
Street, and in an instant a crowd — of which nothing could be 
distinguished in the gloom except that it was a crowd — spread 
over the Place. 

This spectacle had a terror of its own. It is probable that 
this singular procession, which seemed so désirons of con- 
cealing itself under profound darkness, maintained a silence 
no less profound. Nevertheless, some noise must hâve escaped 
it, were it only a trampling. But this noise did not even 
reach our deaf man, and this great multitude, of which he 
saw hardly anything, and of which he heard nothing, though 
it was marching and moving so near him, produced upon 
him the effect of a rabble of dead men, mute, impalpable, 
lost in a smoke. It seemed to him, that he beheld advancing 
towards him a fog of men, and that he saw shadows moving 
in the shadow. 

Then his fears returned to him, the idea of an attempt 
against the gypsy presented itself once more to his mind. 
He was conscious, in a confused way, that a violent crisis was 
approaching. At that critical moment he took counsel with 
himself, with better and prompter reasoning than one would 
hâve expected from so badly organized a brain. Ought he to 
awaken the gypsy ? to make her escapë ? Whither ? The 
streets were invested, the church backed on the river. No 
boat, no issue ! — There was but one thing to be done ; to allow 
himself to be killed on the threshold of Notre-Dame, to resist 
at least until succor arrived, if it should arrive, and not to 
trouble la Esmeralda’s sleep. This resolution once taken, he 
set to examining the enemy with more tranquillity. 

The throng seemed to increase every moment in the church 
square. Only, he presumed that it must be making very 
little noise, since the Windows on the Place remained closed. 
Ail at once, a flame flashed up, and in an instant seven or 
eight lighted torches passed over the heads of the crowd, 
shaking their tufts of flame in the deep shade. Quasimodo 
then beheld distinctly surging in the Parvis a frightful herd 


204 


NOTRE-DAME. 


of men and women in rags, arraed with scythes, pikes, bill- 
hooks and partisans, whose thousand points glittered. Here 
and there black pitchforks formed horns to the hideous faces. 
He vagiiely recalled this populace, and thougbt that be recog- 
nized ail the heads who had saluted hiin as Pope of the Pools 
some months previously. One man who held a torch in one 
hand and a club in the other, mounted a stone post , and 
seeined to be haranguing them. At the saine time the strange 
army executed several évolutions, as though it were taking 
up its post around the church. Quasimodo picked up his 
lantern and descended to the platform between the towers, in 
order to get a nearer view, and to spy ont a means of defence. 

Clopin ïrouillefou, on arriving in front of the lofty portai 
of Notre-Dame had, in fact, ranged his troops in order of 
battle. Although he expected no résistance, he wished, like 
a prudent general, to préservé an order which would permit 
iiim to face, at need, a sudden attack of the watch or the 
police. He had accordingly stationed his brigade in such a 
manner that, viewed from above and from a distance, one 
would hâve pronounced it the Koman triangle of the battle of 
Ecnomus, the boar’s head of Alexander or the famous wedge 
of Gustavus Adolphus. The base of this triangle rested on 
the back of the Place in such a manner as to bar the entrance 
of the Rue du Parvis ; one of its sides faced Hôtel-Dieu, the 
other the Rue Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs. Clopin Trouillefou 
had placed himself at the apex with the Duke of Egypt, our 
friend Jehan, and the most daring of the scavengers. 

An enterprise like that which the vagabonds were now 
undertaking against Notre-Dame was not a very rare thing 
in the cities of the Middle Ages. What we now call the 

police did not exist then. In populous cities, especially in 
capitals, there existed no single, central, regulating power. 
Eeudalism had constructed these great communities in a 
singular manner. A city was an assembly of a thousand 
seigneuries, which divided it into compartments of ail shapes 
and sizes. Hence, a thousand conflicting establishments of 
police ; that îs to say, no police at ail. In Paris, for example, 
independently of the hundred and forty-one Igrds who laid 


AN' AWKWABD FBIEND. 


205 


daim to a manor, there were five and twenty wlio laid daim 
to a manor and to administering justice, from the Bishop of 
Paris, who had five hundred streets, to the Prior of Notre- 
Dame des Champs, who had four. Ail these feudal justices 
recognized the suzerain authority of the king only in name. 
Ail possessed the right of control over the roads. Ail were 
at home. Louis XI., that indefatigahle worker, who so largely 
began the démolition of the feudal édifice, continued by Eidi- 
elieu and Louis XIV. for the profit of royalty, and finished by 
Mirabeau for the benefit of the people, — Louis XI. had cer- 
tainly made an effort to break this network of seignories 
which covered Paris, by throwing violently across them ail 
two or three troops of general police. Thus, in 1465, an 
order to the inhabitants to light candies in their Windows at 
nightfall, and to shut up their dogs under penalty of death ; 
in the same year, an order to close the streets in the evening 
with iron chains, and a prohibition to wear daggers or weapons 
of offence in the streets at night. But in a very short time, 
ail these efforts at communal législation fell into abeyance. 
The bourgeois permitted the wind to blow ont their candies in 
the Windows, and their dogs to stray; the iron chains were 
stretched only in a state of siégé; the prohibition to wear 
daggers wrought no other changes than from the name of the 
Eue Coupe-Gueule to the name of the Eue-Coupe-Gorge * 
which is an évident progress. The old scaffolding of feudal 
jurisdictions remained standing; an immense aggregation of 
bailiwicks and seignories Crossing each other ail over the city, 
interfering with each other, entangled in one another, enmesh- 
ing each other, trespassing on each other; a useless thicket 
of watches, sub-watches and counter-watches, over which, with 
armed force, passed brigandage, rapine, and sédition. Hence, 
in this disorder, deeds of violence on the part of the populace 
directed against a palace, a hôtel, or house in the most thickly 
populated quarters, were not unheard-of occurrences. In the 
majority of such cases, the neighbors did not meddle with the 
matter unless the pillaging extended to themselves. They 
stopped up their ears to the musket shots, closed their shut- 

* Cut-throat. Coupe-gueule being the vulgar word for cut-weazand. 


206 


NOTRE-DAME. 


ters, barricaded their doors, allowed the matter to be con- 
cluded with or without the watch, and the next day it was said 
in Paris, Etienne Barbette was broken open last night. 
The Marshal de Clermont was seized last night, etc/’ Hence, 
not only the royal habitations, the Louvre, the Palace, the 
Bastille, the Tournelles, but simply seignorial résidences, the 
Petit-Bourbon, the Hôtel de Sens, the Hôtel d’ Angoulême, 
etc., had battlements on their walls, and machicolations over 
their doors. Churches were guarded by their sanctity. Some, 
among the number Hotre-Dame, were fortified. The Abbey 
of Saint-German-des-Prés was castellated like a baronial man- 
sion, and more brass expended about it in bombards than in 
bells. Its fortress was still to be seen in 1610. To-day, 
barely its church remains. 

Let us return to Notre-Dame. 

When the first arrangements were completed, and we must 
say, to the honor of vagabond discipline, that Clopin’s orders 
were executed in silence, and with admirable précision, the 
worthy chief of the band, mounted on the parapet of the 
church square, and raised his hoarse and surly voice, turning 
towards Notre-Dame, and brandishing his torch whose light, 
tossed by the wind, and veiled every moment by its own 
smoke, made the reddish façade of the church appear and dis- 
appear before the eye. 

To you, Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Paris, counsellor in 
the Court of Parliament, I, Clopin Trouillfou, king of Thunes, 
grand Coësre, prince of Argot, bishop of fools, I say : Our 
sister, falsely condemned for magic, hath taken refuge in your 
church, you owe her asylum and safety. Now the Court of 
Parliament wishes to seize her once more there, and you con- 
sent to it ; so that she would be hanged to-morrow in the 
Grève, if God and the outcasts were not here. If your church 
is sacred, so is our sister ; if our sister is not sacred, neither 
is your church. That is why we call upon you to return the 
girl if you wish to save your church, or we will take possession 
of the girl again and pillage the church, which will be a good 
thing. In token of which I here plant my banner, and may 
God preserve you, bishop of Paris.” 


AN AWKWARD FBIEND. 


207 


Quasimodo could not, unfortunately, hear these words ut- 
tered with. a sort of sombre and savage majesty. A vagabond 
presented bis banner to Clopin, who planted it solemnly be- 
tween two paving-stones. It was a pitchfork from whose 
points hung a bleeding quarter of carrion méat. 

That done, tbe King of Thunes turned round and cast his 
eyes over his army, a fierce multitude whose glances flashed 
almost equally with their pikes. After a momentary pause, — 
“ Forward, my sons ! ” he cried ; to work, locksmiths ! ” 
Thirty bold men, square shouldered, and with pick-lock faces, 
stepped from the ranks, with hammers, pincers, and bars of 
iron on their shoulders. They betook themselves to the prin- 
cipal door of the church, ascended the steps, and were soon to 
be seen squatting under the arch, working at the door with 
pincers and levers ; a throng of vagabonds followed them to 
help or look on. The eleven steps before the portai were 
covered with them. 

But the door stood firm. ‘‘ The devil ! ’tis hard and obsti- 
nate ! ” said one. It is old, and its gristles hâve become 
bony,’’ said another. “ Courage, comrades ! ” resumed Clopin. 
‘‘I wager my head against a dipper that you will hâve 
opened the door, rescued the girl, and despoiled the chief altar 
before a single beadle is awake. Stay ! I think I hear the 
lock breaking up.’’ 

Clopin was interrupted by a frightful uproar which re- 
sounded behind him at that moment. He wheeled round. 
An enormous beam had just f allen from above ; it had crushed 
a dozen vagabonds on the pavement with the sound of a 
cannon, breaking in addition, legs here and there in the 
crowd of beggars, who sprang aside with cries of terror. In 
a twinkling, the narrow precincts of the church parvis were 
cleared. The locksmiths, although protected by the deep 
vaults of the portai, abandoned the door and Clopin himself 
retired to a respectful distance from the church. 

“ I had a narrow escape !” cried Jehan. “ I felt the wind, 
of it, tete-de-hœuf ! but Pierre the Slaughterer is slaughtered ! ” 
It is impossible to describe the astonishment mingled with 
fright which fell upon the ruffians in company with this beam. 


208 


nOTBE-BAME. 


They remained for several minutes with their eyes in the 
air, more dismayed by that piece of wood than by tbe king’s 
twenty thousand archers. 

Satan ! ” muttered tlie Duke of Egypt, this smacks of 
magic ! 

“ ’Tis the moon which threw this log at us,’’ said Andry the 
Eed. 

‘^Call the moon the friend of the Virgin, after that ! ” went 
on François Chanteprune. 

thousand popes!” exclaimed Clopin, ^^you are ail 
fools ! ” But he did not know how to explain the fall of the 
beam. 

Meanwhile, nothing could be distinguished on the façade, to 
whose summit the light of the torches did not reach. The 
heavy beam lay in the middle of the enclosure, and groans 
were heard from the poor wretches who had received its first 
shock, and who had been almost eut in twain, on the angle of 
the stone steps. 

The King of Thunes, his first amazement passed, finally 
found an explanation which appeared plausible to his com- 
panions. 

Throat of God ! are the canons defending themselves ? 
To the sack, then ! to the sack ! ” 

To the sack ! ” repeated the rabble, with a furious hurrah. 
A discharge of crossbows and hackbuts against the front of the 
church followed. 

At this détonation, the peaceable inhabitants of the sur- 
rounding houses woke up ; many Windows were seen to open, 
and nightcaps and hands holding candies appeared at the case- 
ments. 

‘‘Fire at the Windows,” shouted Clopin. The Windows 
were immediately closed, and the poor bourgeois, who had 
hardly had time to cast a frightened glance on this scene of 
gleams and tumult, returned, perspiring with fear to their 
wives, asking themselves whether the witches’ sabbath was 
now being held in the parvis of Notre-Dame, or whether there 
was an assault of Burgundians, as in ’64. Then the husbands 
thought of theft ; the wives, of râpe ; and ail trembled. 


AN AWKWARD FRIEND. 


209 


“ To tlie sack ! ’’ repeated the thieves’ crew ; but they dared 
not approach. They stared at the beam, they stared at the 
church. The beam did not stir, the édifice preserved its calm 
and deserted air ; but something chilled the outcasts. 

^‘To Work, locksiniths ! shouted Trouillefou. “Let the 
door be forced ! 

No one took a step. 

Beard and belly ! ’’ said Clopin, here be men afraid of a 
beam.’’ 

An old locksmith addressed him : — 

“ Captain, ’tis not the beam which bothers us, ’tis the door, 
which is ail covered with iron bars. Our pincers are power- 
less against it.” 

What more do you want to break it in ? ” demanded 
Clopin. 

^^Ah ! we ought to hâve a battering ram.” 

The King of Thunes ran boldly to the formidable beam, and 
placed his foot upon it : ^^Here is one!” he exclaimed; “’tis 
the canons who send it to you.” And, making a mocking 
sainte in the direction of the church, “ Thanks, canons ! ” 

This piece of bravado produced its efîects, — the spell of 
the beam was broken. The vagabonds recovered their cour- 
age ; soon the heavy joist, raised like a feather by two hun- 
dred vigorous arms, was fiung with fury against the great door 
which they had tried to batter down. At the sight of that 
long beam, in the half-light which the infrequent torches of 
the brigands spread over the Place, thus borne by that crowd 
of men who dashed it at a run against the church, one would 
hâve thought that he beheld a monstrous beast with a thou- 
sand feet attacking with lowered head the giant of stone. 

At the shock of the beam, the half metallic door sounded 
like an immense drum ; it was not burst in, but the whole 
cathédral trembled, and the deepest cavities of the édifice 
were heard to écho. 

At the same moment, a shower of large stones began to fall 
from the top of the façade on the assailants. 

“The de vil!” cried Jehan, “are the towers shaking their 
balustrades down on our heads ? ” 


210 


NOTBE-DAME. 


But the impulse had been given, the King of Thunes had 
set the example. Evidently, the bishop was defending him- 
self, and they only battered the door with the more rage, in 
spite of the stones which cracked skulls right and left. 

It was remarkable that ail these stones fell one by one ; but 
they followed each other closely. The thieves always felt two 
at a time, one on their legs and one on their heads. There 
were few which did not deal their blow, and a large layer of 
dead and wounded lay bleeding and panting beneath the feet 
of the assailants who, now grown furious, replaced each other 
without intermission. The long beam continued to belabor 
the door, at regular inter vais, like the clapper of a bell, the 
stones to rain down, the door to groan. 

The reader has no doubt divined that this unexpected résist- 
ance which had exasperated the outcasts came from Quasi- 
modo. 

Chance had, unfortunately, favored the brave deaf man. 

When he had descended to the platform between the towers, 
his ideas were ail in confusion He had run up and down 
along the gallery for several minutes like a madman, sur- 
veying from above, the compact mass of vagabonds ready to 
hurl itself on the church, demanding the safety of the gypsy 
from the devil or from God. The thought had occurred to 
him of ascending to the Southern belfry and sounding the 
alarin, but before he could hâve set the bell in motion, before 
Marie’s voice could hâve uttered a single clamor, was there 
not time to burst in the door of the church ten times over ? 
It was precisely the moment when the locksmiths were ad- 
vancing upon it with their tools. What was to be done ? 

Ail at once, he remembered that some masons had been at 
work ail day repairing the wall, the timber-work, and the roof 
of the South tower. This was a flash of light. The wall was 
of stone, the roof of lead, the timber-work of wood. (That pro- 
digious timber-work, so dense that it was called the forest.”) 

Quasimodo hastened to that tower. The lower chambers 
were, in fact, full of materials. There were piles of rough 
blocks of stone, sheets of lead in rolls, bundles of laths, heavy 
beams already notched with the saw, heaps of plaster. 


AN AWKWARD FBIEND. 


211 


Time was pressing, The pikes and hammers were at work 
below. With a strength which the sense of danger increased 
tenfold, he seized one of the beams — the longest and heavi- 
est; he pushed it ont through a loophole, then, grasping it 
again outside of the tower, he inade it slide along the angle of 
the balustrade which surrounds the platform, and let it fly 
into the abyss. The enormous timber, during that fall of a 
hundred and sixty feet, scraping the wall, breaking the carv- 
ings, turned many times on its centre, like the arm of a 
windmill flying off alone through space. At last it reached 
the ground, the horrible cry arose, and the black beam, as it 
rebounded from the pavement, resembled a serpent leaping. 

Quasimodo beheld the outcasts scatter at the fall of the 
beam, like ashes at the breath of a child. He took advantage 
of their fright, and while they were fixing a superstitions 
glance on the club which had fallen from heaven, and while 
they were putting ont the eyes of the stone saints on the 
front with a discharge of arrows and buckshot, Quasimodo 
was silently piling up plaster, stones, and rough blocks of 
stone, even the sacks of tools belonging to the masons, on the 
edge of the balustrade from which the beam had already been 
hurled. 

Thus, as soon as they began to batter the grand door, the 
shower of rough blocks of stone began to fall, and it seemed 
to them that the church itself was being demolished over 
their heads. 

Any one who could hâve beheld Quasimodo at that moment 
would hâve been frightened. Independently of the projectiles 
which he had piled upon the balustrade, he had collected a 
heap of stones on the platform itself. As fast as the blocks 
on the exterior edge were exhausted, he drew on the heap. 
Then he stooped and rose, stooped and rose again with incred- 
ible activity. His huge gnome’s head bent over the balus- 
trade, then an enormous stone fell, then another, then another. 
Trom time to time, he followed a fine stone with his eye, and 
when it did good execution, he said, Hum ! ’’ 

Meanwhile, the beggars did not grow discouraged. The 
thick door on which they were venting their fury had already 


212 


NOTKE-DAME. 


trembled more than twenty times beneath the weigbt of tbeir 
oaken battering-ram, multiplied by tbe strength of a bundred 
men. The panels cracked, the carved work flew into splin- 
ters, the hinges, at every blow, leaped from their pins, the 
planks yawned, the wood crumbled to powder, ground between 
the iron sheathing. Fortunately for Quasimodo, there was 
more iron than wood. 

Nevertheless, he felt that the great door was yielding. Al- 
though he did not hear it, every blow of the ram reverberated 
simultaneously in the vaults of the clinrch and within it. 
From above he beheld the vagabonds, filled with triumph and 
rage, shaking their fists at the gloomy façade ; and both on 
the gypsy’s account and his own he envied the wings of the 
owls which flitted away above his head in docks. 

His shower of stone blocks was not sufficient to repel the 
assailants. 

At this moment of anguish, he noticed, a little lower down 
than the balustrade whence he was criishing the thieves, two 
long stone gutters which discharged immediately over the 
great door ; the internai orifice of these gutters terminated 
on the pavement of the platform. An idea occurred to him ; he 
ran in search of a fagot in his bellringeFs den, placed on this 
fagot a great many bundles of laths, and many rolls of lead, 
munitions which he had not employed so far, and having 
arranged this pile in front of the hole to the two gutters, he 
set. it on lire with his lantern. 

During this time, since the stones no longer fell, the out- 
casts ceased to gaze into the air. The bandits, panting like a 
pack of hounds who are forcing a boar into his lâir, pressed 
tumultuously round the great door, ail disfigured by the bat- 
tering ram, but still standing. They were waiting with a 
qui ver for the great blow which should split it open. They 
vied with each other in pressing as close as possible, in order 
to dash among the first, when it should open, into that opulent 
cathédral, a vast réservoir where the wealth of three centuries 
had been piled up. They reminded each other with roars of 
exultation and greedy lust, of the beautiful silver crosses, the 
fine copes of brocade, the beautiful tombs of silver gilt, the 


AN AWKWABD FRIEND. 


213 


great magnificences of the choir, the dazzling festivals, the 
Christmasses sparkling with torches, the Easters sparkling 
with sunshine, — ail those splendid solemneties wherein chan- 
deliers, ciboriums, tabernacles, and reliquaries, studded the 
altars with a crnst of gold and diamonds. Certainly, at that 
fine moment, thieves and pseudo sufferers, doctors in stealing, 
and vagabonds, were thinking much less of deliveriiig the 
gypsy than of pillaging Notre-Dame. We could even easily 
believe that for a goodly number among them la Esmeralda 
was only a pretext, if thieves needed pretexts. 

Ail at once, at the moment when they were grouping theni- 
selves round the ram for a last effort, each one holding his 
breath and stiffening his muscles in order to commun icate ail 
his force to the décisive blow, a howl more frightful still than 
that which had burst forth and expired beneath the beam, rose 
among them. Those who did not cry out, those who were 
still alive, looked. Two streams of nielted lead were falling 
from the summit of the édifice into the thickest of the rabble. 
That sea of men had just sunk down beneath the boiling métal, 
which had made, at the two points where it fell, two black and 
smoking holes in the crowd, such as hot water would make in 
snow. Dying men, half consumed and groaning with anguish, 
could be seen writhing there. Around these two principal 
streams there were drops of that horrible rain, which scattered 
over the assailants and entered their skulls like gimlets of fire. 
It was a heavy fire which overwhelmed these wretches with a 
thousand hailstones. 

The outcry was heartrending. They fled pell-mell, hurling 
the beam upon the bodies, the boldest as well as the most 
timid, and the parvis was cleared a second time. 

AU eyes were raised to the top of the church. They 
beheld there an extraordinary sight. On the crest of the 
highest gallery, higher than the central rose window, there 
was a great flame rising between the two towers with whirl- 
winds of sparks, a vast, disordered, and furious flame, a tongue 
of which was borne into the smoke by the wind, from time 
to time. Below that fire, below the gloomy balustrade with 
its trefoils showing darkly against its glare, two spouts with 


214 


NOTBE-BAME. 


monster throats were vomiting forth unceasingly that burning 
rain, whose silvery stream stood out against the shadows of 
tbe lower façade. As tbey approached the earth, these two 
jets of liquid lead spread out in sheaves, like water springing 
from the thousand holes of a watering-pot. Above the flame, 
the enormous towers, two sides of each of which were visible 
in Sharp outline, the one wholly black, the other wholly red, 
seemed still more vast with ail the immensity of the shadow 
which they cast even to the sky. 

Their innnmerable sculptures of démons and dragons as- 
sumed a lugubrious aspect. The restless light of the flame 
made them move to the eye. There were griffins which had 
the air of laughing, gargogles which one fancied one heard 
yelping, salamanders which puffed at the lire, tarasques* 
which sneezed in the smoke. And among the monsters thus 
roused from their sleep of stone by this flame, by this noise, 
there was one who walked about, and who was seen, from 
time to time, to pass across the glowing face of the pile, like 
a bat in front of a candie. 

Without doubt, this strange beacon light would awaken far 
away, the woodcutter of the hills of Bicêtre, terrified to be- 
hold the gigantic shadow of the towers of Notre-Dame quiver- 
ing over his heaths. 

A terrified silence ensued among the outcasts, during which 
nothing was heard, but the cries of alarm of the canons shut 
up in their cloister, and more uneasy than horses in a burning 
stable, the furtive Sound of Windows hastily opened and still 
more hastily closed, the internai hurly-burly of the houses and 
of the Hôtel-Dieu, the wind in the flame, the last death-rattle 
of the dying, and the continued crackling of the rain of lead 
upon the pavement. 

In the meanwhile, the principal vagabonds had retired be- 
neath the porch of the Gondelaurier mansion, and were hold- 
ing a council of war. 

The Duke of Egypt, seated on a stone post, contemplated 
the phantasmagorical bonfire, glowing at a height of two hun- 

* The représentation of a monstrous animal solemnly drawn about in 
'l'arascon and other French towns. 


AN AWKWARD FRIENB. 215 

dred feet in the air, with religions terror. Clopin ïrouillefou 
bit his buge fists with rage. 

“Impossible to get in he muttered between his teeth. 

“ An old, enchanted church ! ’’ grumbled the aged Bohemian, 
Mathias Hungadi Spicali. 

“ By the Pope^s whiskers î ’’ went on a sham soldier, who had 
once been in service, “ here are church gutters spitting melted 
lead at yoii better than the machicolations of Lectoure.’^ 

“ Do you see that démon passing and repassing in front of 
the fire ? ” exclaimed the Duke of Egypt. 

“ Pardieu, ^tis that damned bellringer, ’tis Quasimodo,’^ 
said Clopin. 

The Bohemian tossed his head. “ I tell you, that ’tis the 
spirit Sabnac, the grand marquis, the démon of fortifications. 
He has the form of an armed soldier, the head of a lion. 
Sometimes he rides a hideous horse. He changes men into 
stones, of which he builds towers. He commands fifty légions 
’Tis he indeed ; I recognize him. Sometimes he is clad in a 
handsome golden robe, figured after the Turkish fashion.’’ 

“ Where is Bellevigne de 1’ Étoile ? ” demanded Clopin. 

“ He is dead.’^ 

Andry the Eed laughed in an idiotie way: “Notre-Dame 
is making work for the hospital,’’ said he. 

“ Is there, then, no way of forcing this door,” exclaimed the 
King of Thunes, stampiug his foot. 

The Duke of Egypt pointed sadly to the two streams of 
boiling lead which did not cease to streak the black façade, 
like two long distaffs of phosphorus. 

“ Churches hâve been known to defend themselves thus ail 
by themselves,” he remarked with a sigh. “ Saint-Sophia at 
Constantinople, forty years ago, hurled to the earth three 
times in succession, the crescent of Mahom, by shaking her 
dômes, which are her heads. Guillaume de Paris, who built 
this one was a magician.” 

“Must we then retreat in pitiful fashion, like highway- 
jnen ? ” said Clopin. “ Must we leave our sister here, whom 
those hooded wolves will hang to-morrow.” 

“ And the sacristy, where there are wagon-loads of gold ! ” 


216 


NOTBE-BAME, 


added a vagabond, wbose name, we regret to say, we do not 
know. 

Beard of Mahom ! ” cried Trouillefou. 

Let us make another trial/’ resumed tbe vagabond. 

Mathias Hungadi shook his head. 

^^We shall ne ver get in by the door. We must ünd the 
defect in the armor of the old fairy ; a hole, a false postern, 
some joint or other.” 

“ Who will go with me ? ” said Clopin. I shall go at it 
again. By the way, where is the little scholar Jehan, who 
is so encased in iron ? ” 

He is dead, no doubt,” some one replied ; we no longer 
hear his laugh.” 

ïhe King of Thunes frowned : So much the worse. 

There was a brave heart under that ironmongery. And Mas- 
ter Pierre Gringoire ? ” 

Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Bed, he slipped away 
before we reached the Pont-aux-Changeurs,” 

Clopin stamped his foot. Gueule-Dieu ! ’twas he who 
pushed us on hither, and he has deserted us in the very middle 
of the job ! Cowardly chatterer, with a slipper for a helmet ! ” 

Captain Clopin,” said Andry the Bed, who was gazing 
down Bue du Parvis, ^^yonder is the little scholar.” 

Praised be Pluto ! ” said Clopin. But what the devil is 
he dragging after him ?” ^ 

It was, in fact, J ehan, who was running as f ast as his heavy 
outfit of a Paladin, and a long ladder which trailed on the 
pavement, would permit, more breathless than an ant har- 
nessed to a blade of grass twenty times longer than itself. 

‘‘Victory! Te Deum!^^ cried the scholar. Here is the 
ladder of the longshoremen of Port Saint-Landry.” 

Clopin approached him. 

Child, what do y ou mean to do, corne-dieu ! with this 
ladder ? ” 

“I hâve it,” replied Jehan, panting. knew where it was 
under the shed of the lieutenant’s house. There’s a wench 
there whom I know, who thinks me as handsome as Cupido. 
I made use of her to get the ladder, and I hâve the ladder, 


AN AWKWAUB FRIEND. 217 

Fasque-Mahom! The poor girl came to open the door to me 
in her shift.’^ 

Yes,’’ said Clopin, ^^but what are you going to do with 
that ladder ? 

Jehan gazed at him with a malicions, knowing look, and 
cracked his fingers like castanets. At that moment he was 
sublime. On his head he wore one of those overloaded hel- 
mets of the fifteenth century, which frightened the enemy 
with their fanciful crests. His bristled with ten iron beaks, 
so that Jehan could hâve disputed with Nestor’s Homeric 
vessel the redoubtable title of ôe^té^Solog. 

What do I mean to do with it, august king of Thunes ? 
Do you see that row of statues which hâve such idiotie 
expressions, yonder, above the three portais ? ” 

‘‘Yes. Well?’’ 

’Tis the gallery of the kings of France.’’ 

What is that to me ? ” said Clopin. 

Wait ! At the end of that gallery there is a door which is 
never fastened otherwise than with a latch, and with this 
ladder I ascend, and I am in the church.” 

Child, let me be the first to ascend.” 

^^No, comrade, the ladder is mine. Corne, you shall be the 
second.” 

May Beelzebub strangle you ! ” said surly Clopin, I 
won’t be second to anybody.” 

Then find a ladder, Clopin ! ” 

Jehan set ont on a run across the Place, dragging his lad- 
der and shouting : ^^Follow me, lads ! ” 

In an instant the ladder was raised, and propped against 
the balustrade of the lower gallery, above one of the latéral 
doors. The throng of vagabonds, uttering loud acclamations, 
crowded to its foot to ascend. But Jehan maintained his 
right, and was the first to set foot on the rungs. The pas- 
sage was tolerably long. The gallery of the kings of France 
is to-day about sixty feet above the pavement. The eleven 
steps ■ of the fiight before the door, made it still higher. 
Jehan mounted slowly, a good deal incommoded by his 
heavy armor, holding his crossbow in one hand, and clinging 


218 


NOTRE-DAME, 


to a rang with the other. Wlien he reached the middle of 
the ladder, he cast a melancholy glance at the poor dead out- 
casts, with which the steps were strewn. Alas ! said he, 
^^here is a heap of bodies worthy of the fifth book of the 
Iliad!’’ Then he continued his ascent. The vagabonds fol- 
lowed him. There was one on every rang. At the sight of 
this line of cuirassed backs, undulating as they rose through 
the glooin, one would hâve pronounced it a serpent with steel 
scales, which was raising itself erect in front of the church. 
Jehan who formed the head, and who was whistling, com- 
pleted the illusion. 

The scholar finally reached the balcony of the gallery, and 
climbed over it nimbly, to the applause of the whole vagabond 
tribe. Thus master of the citadel, he uttered a shout of joy, 
and suddenly halted, petrified. He had just caught sight of 
Quasimodo concealed in the dark, with flashing eye, behind 
one of the statues of the kings. 

Before a second assailant could gain a foothold on the gal- 
lery, the formidable hunchback leaped to the head of the 
ladder, without uttering a word, seized the ends of the two 
uprights with his powerful hands, raised them, pushed them 
out from the wall, balanced the long and pliant ladder, loaded 
with vagabonds from top to bottom for a moment, in the 
midst of shrieks of anguish, then suddenly, with superhuman 
force, hurled this cluster of men backward into the Place. 
There was a moment when even the most resolute trembled. 
The ladder, launched backwards, remained erect and standing 
for an instant, and seemed to hesitate, then wavered, then 
suddenly, describing a frightful arc of a circle eighty feet in 
radius, crashed upon the pavement with its load of ruffians, 
more rapidly than a drawbridge when its chains break. 
There arose an immense imprécation, then ail was still, 
and a few mutilated wretches were seen, crawling over the 
heap of dead. 

A Sound of wrath and grief followed the first cries of tri- 
umph among the besiegers. Quasimodo, impassive, with both 
elbows propped on the balustrade, looked on. He had the 
air of an old, bushy-headed king at his window. 


AN AWKWABD FRIENB. 


219 


As for Jehan Frollo, he was in a critical position. He 
found himself in the gallery with the formidable bellringer, 
alone, separated from his companions by a ’ vertical wall 
eighty feet high. While Quasimodo was dealing with the 
ladder, the scholar had run to the postern which he believed 
to be open. It was not. The deaf inan had closed it behind 
hiin when he entered the gallery. Jehan had then concealed 
himself behind a stone king, not daring to breathe, and fixing 
upon the monstrous hnnchback a frightened gaze, like the 
man, who, when courting the wife of the guardian of a 
menagerie, went one evening to a love rendezvous, mistook 
the wall which he was to climb, and suddenly found himself 
face to face with a white bear. 

For the first few moments, the deaf man paid no heed to 
him ; but at last he turned his head, and suddenly straight- 
ened up. He had just caught sight of the scholar. 

Jehan prepared himself for a rough shock, but the deaf 
man remained motionless; only he had turned towards the 
scholar and was looking at him. 

^‘Ho! ho!’’ said Jehan, “what do you mean by staring at 
me with that solitary and melancholy eye ? ” 

As he spoke thus, the young scamp stealthily adjusted his 
crossbow. 

“ Quasimodo ! ” he cried, I am going to change your sur- 
name : you shall be called the blind man.” 

The shot sped. The feathered vireton * whizzed and entered 
the hunchback’s left arm. Quasimodo appeared no more 
moved by it than by a scratch to King Pharamond. He laid his 
hand on the arrow, tore it from' his arm, and tranquilly broke it 
across his big knee ; then he let the two pièces drop on the floor, 
rather than threw them down. But Jehan had no opportunity 
to tire a second time. The arrow broken, Quasimodo breathing 
heavily, bounded like a grasshopper, and he fell upon the 
scholar, whose armor was flattened against the wall by the blow. 

Then in that gloom, wherein wavered the light of the 
torches, a terrible thing was seen. 

* An arrow with a pyramidal head of iron and copper spiral wings by 
which a rotatory motion was comnmnicated. 


220 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Quasimodo had grasped witli liis left liand the two arms of 
Jehan, who did not offer any résistance, so thoroughly did he 
feel that he was lost. With his right hand, the deaf inan 
detached one by one, in silence, with sinister slowness, ail the 
pièces of his armor, the sword, the daggers, the helmet, the 
cuirass, the leg pièces. One would hâve said that it was a 
monkey taking the shell from a nut. Quasimodo flung the 
scholar’s iron shell at his feet, piece by piece. 

When the scholar beheld himself disarmed, stripped, weak, 
and naked in those terrible hands, he made no attempt to 
speak to the deaf man, but began to laugh audaciously in his 
face, and to sing with his intrepid heedlessness of a child of 
sixteen, the then popular ditty : — 

“Elle est bien habillée, 

La ville de Cambrai ; 

Marafin l’a pillée. . . 

He did not finish. Quasimodo was seen on the parapet of 
the gallery, holding the scholar by the feet with one hand 
and whirling him over the abyss like a sling ; then a Sound 
like that of a bony structure in contact with a wall was 
heard, and something was seen to fall which halted a third 
of the way down in its fall, on a projection in the architect- 
ure. It was a dead body which remained hanging there, bent 
double, its loins broken, its skull empty. 

A cry of horror rose among the vagabonds. 

“Vengeance!” shouted Clopin. “To the sack!” replied 
the multitude. “Assault ! assault ! ” 

There came a tremendous howl, in which were mingled 
ail tongues, ail dialects, ail accents. The death of the poor 
scholar imparted a furious ardor to that crowd. It was seized 
with shame, and the wrath of having been held so long in 
check before a church by a hunchback. Eage found ladders, 
multiplied the torches, and, at the expiration of a few minutes, 
Quasimodo, in despair, beheld that terrible ant heap mount on 
ail sides to the assault of Notre-Dame. Those who had no 
ladders had knotted ropes ; those who had no ropes climbed 
* The City of Cambrai is well dressed. Marafin plundered it. 


AN AWKWAUD FRlENÙ. 


221 


by the projections of the carvings. They hung from each 
other’s rags. There were no means of resisting that rising 
tide of frightful faces ; rage inade these fierce countenances 
ruddy; tlieir clayey brows were dripping witb sweat; tbeir 
eyes darted lightnings ; ail these grimaces, ail these horrors * 
laid siégé to Quasimodo. One would hâve said that some 
other church had despatched to the assanlt of Notre-Dame its 
gorgons, its dogs, its drées, its démons, its most fantastic 
sculptures. It was like a layer of living monsters on the 
stone monsters of the façade. 

Meanwhile, the Place was studded with a thousand torches. 
This scene of confusion, till now hid in darkness, was sud- 
denly flooded with light. The parvis was resplendent, and 
cast a radiance on the sky ; the bonfire lighted on the lofty 
platform was still burning, and illuminated the city far away. 
The enormous silhouette of the two towers, projected afar on 
the roofs of Paris, and formed a large notch of black in this 
light. The city seemed to be aroused. Alarm bells wailed in 
the distance. The vagabonds howled, panted, swore, climbed ; 
and Quasimodo, powerless against so many enemies, shudder- 
ing for the gypsy, beholding the furious faces approaching 
ever nearer and nearer to his gallery, entreated heaven for a 
miracle, and wrung his arm s in despair. 




CHAPTEE V. 

THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS 
HIS PRAYERS. 

The reader has not, perhaps, forgotten that one moment 
before catching sigbt of the nocturnal band of vagabonds, 
Quasimodo, as he inspected Paris from the heights of his bell 
tower, perceived only one light burning, whicli gleamed like a 
star from a window on the topmost story of a lofty édifice 
beside the Porte Saint- Antoine. This édifice was the Bastille. 
That star was the candie of Louis XI. 

King Louis XI. had, in fact, been two days in Paris. He 
was to take his departure on the next day but one for his cit- 
adel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but seldom and brief 
appearance in his good city of Paris, since there he did not 
feel about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers. 

He had corne, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great 
chamber five toises * square, which he had at the Louvre, with 
its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and 
thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by 
twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid ail 
this grandeur. This good bourgeois king preferred the Bas- 
tille with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille 
was stronger than the Louvre. 

This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in 
the famous State prison, was also tolerably spacious and occu- 

* An ancient long measnre in France, containing six feet and nearly 
five inches English measnre. 


222 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SANS HIS PRAYERS. 223 


pied the topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon 
keep. It was circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining 
straw, ceiled with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded 
métal with inter joists in color; wainscoated with rich woods 
sown with rosettes of white métal, and with others painted a 
fine, bright green, made of orpiment and fine indigo. 

There was only one windoAv, a long pointed casement, latticed 
with brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine 
colored panes with the arms of the king and of the queen, 
each pane being worth two and twenty sols. 

ïhere was but one entrance, a modem door, with a fiat arch, 
garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the 
outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail édifices 
of cabinet-work curiously wronght, nnmbers of which were 
still to be seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. 

Although they disfigure and embarrass the places,” says 
Sauvel in despair, our old people are still unwilling to get 
rid of them, and keep them in spite of everybody.” 

In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes 
ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms, 
nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools sus- 
tained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece. Only 
one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen ; the 
wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of 
ruby Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, 
and studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of 
this chair made it apparent that only one person had a right 
to sit down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite 
close to the window, there was a table covered with a cloth 
with a pattern of birds. On this table stood an inkhorn 
spotted with ink, some parchments, several pens, and a large 
goblet of chased silver. A little further on was a brazier, 
a praying stool in crimson velvet, relieved with small bosses 
of gold. Finally, at the extreme end of the room, a simple 
bed of scarlet and yellow damask, without either tinsel or 
lace ; having only an ordinary fringe. This bed, famous for 
having borne the sleep or the sleeplessness of Louis XI., was 
still to be seen two hundred years ago, at the house of a 


224 


NOTRE-DAMR 


councillor of State, where it was seen by old Madame Pilou, 
celebrated in Cyrus under the name Arricidie and of la Morale 
Vivante. 

Such was the chamber whicli was called the retreat where 
Monsieur Louis de France says his prayers.’’ 

At the moment when we hâve introdiiced the reader into it, 
this retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an 
hour before ; night was corne, and there was only one flickering 
wax candie set on the table to light five persons variously 
grouped in the chamber. 

The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly 
clad in breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and 
a loose coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black 
ligures. This splendid costume, on which the light played, 
seemed glazed with llame on every fold. The man who wore 
it had his armorial bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid 
colors ; a chevron accompanied by a deer passant. The shield 
was flanked, on the right by an olive branch, on the left by a 
deer’s antiers. This man wore in his girdle a rich dagger 
whose hilt, of silver gilt, was chased in the form of a helmet, 
and surmounted by a count’s coronet. He had a forbidding 
air, a proud mien, and a head held high. At the first glance 
one read arrogance on his visage ; at the second, craft. 

He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in 
his hand, behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body 
ungracefully donbled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the 
table, a very badly accoutred personage. Let the reader imag- 
ine in fact, on the rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked 
knees, two thin thighs, poorly clad in black worsted tricot, 
a body enveloped in a cloak of fustian, with fur trimming 
of which more leather than hair was visible ; lastly, to crown 
ail, a greasy old hat of the worst sort of black cloth, bordered 
with a circular string of leaden figures. This, in company with 
a dirty skull-cap, which hardly allowed a hair to escape, was 
ail that distinguished the seated personage. He held his head 
so bent upon his breast, that nothing was to be seen of his 
face thus thrown into shadow, except the tip of his nose, upon 
which fell a ray of light, and which must hâve been long. 


MONSIEUB LOUIS SAYS HIS PEAYERS. 225 

From thé thinness of Fis wrinkled hand, one divined tliat Fe 
was an old man. It was Louis XI. 

At some distance FeFind tFem, two men dressed in garments 
of FlemisF style were conversing, wFo were not sufficiently 
lost in tFe sFadow to prevent any one wFo Fad been présent 
at tFe performance of Gringoire’s mystery from recognizing in 
tFem two of tFe principal FlemisF envoys, Guillaume Rym, 
tFe sagacious pensioner of GFent, and Jacques Coppenole, tlie 
popular Fosier. TFe reader will remember that tFese men 
were mixed up in tFe secret politics of Louis XI. 

Finally, quite at the end of tFe room, near the door, in tFe 
dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man witF thick- 
set limbs, a military harness, witF a surcoat of armorial bear- 
ings, wFose square face pierced witF staring eyes, slit witF an 
immense moutF, Fis ears concealed by two large screens of 
flat hair, Fad sometFing about it both of tFe dog and tFe tiger. 

Ail were uncovered except tFe king. 

TFe gentleman who stood near the king was reading Fini a 
sort of long memorial to wFicF Fis majesty seemed to be lis- 
tening attentively. The two Flemings were wFispering to- 
gether. 

“ Cross of God ! ’’ grumbled Coppenole, “ I am tired of 
standing ; is there no chair here ? ” 

Eym replied by a négative gesture, accompanied by a dis- 
creet smile. 

“ Croix-Dieu ! ” resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at 
being obliged to lower Fis voice thus, “ I should like to sit 
down on the floor, with my legs crossed, like a Fosier, as I do 
in my shop.’^ 

Take good care that you do not. Master Jacques.’^ 

“ Ouais ! Master Guillaume ! can one only remain Fere on 
Fis feet ? ’’ 

Or on Fis knees,’^ said Eym. 

At that moment the king’s voice was uplifted. TFey Feld 
their peace. 

Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for 
the mantles of the clerks of our crown ! TFat’s it ! Pour out 
gold by the ton ! Are you mad, Olivier ? ” 


226 


NOTBE-BAME. 


As lie spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden 
shells of the collai of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on 
his neck. The candie fully illuminated his gaunt and morose 
profile. He tore the papers froin the other’s hand. 

“You are ruining ns!’’ he cried, casting his hollow eyes 
over the scroll. What is ail this ? What need hâve we of so 
prodigious a household ? Two chaplains at ten livres a month 
each, and a chapel clerk at one hnndred sols ! A valet-de- 
chambre at ninety livres a year. Four head cooks at six score 
livres a year each ! A spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a 
butler, two sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month 
each ! Two scullions at eight livres ! A groom of the stables 
and his two aids at four and twenty livres a month ! A por- 
ter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two carters, each sixty livres a year ! 
And the farrier six score livres ! And the master of the 
chamber of our funds, twelve hnndred livres ! And the comp- 
troller five hnndred. And how do I know what else ? ’Tis 
ruinons. The wages of onr servants are pntting France to 
the pillage ! Ail the ingots of the Louvre will melt before 
such a fire of expenses ! We shall hâve to sell onr plate ! 
And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his hat) 
lend us life, we shall drink onr potions from a pewter pot ! ” 
So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which 
gleamed upon the table. He coughed and continned, — 

“ Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, 
like kings and emperors, shonld not allow snmptuonsness in 
their houses ; for the fire spreads thence throngh the province. 
Hence, Master Olivier, consider this said once for ail. Our 
expenditure increases every year. The thing displease us. 
How, pasque-Dieu! when in ’79 it did not exceed six and 
thirty thousand livres, did it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand 
six hundred and nineteen livres ? I hâve the figures in my 
head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty livres, 
and this year, by the faith of my body, it will reach eighty 
thousand livres ! Doubled in four years ! Monstrous ! ” 

He paused breathless, then resumed energetically, — 

I behold around me only people who fatten on my lean- 
ness ! you suck crowns from me at every pore ! ” 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SANS HIS PRAYERS. 


227 

AU remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath 
which are allowed to take their course. He continued, — 

like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of 
France, that we should re-establish what they call the grand 
charges of the Crown ! Charges in very deed ! Charges which 
crush ! Ah ! gentlemen ! you say that we are not a king to 
reign dapifero nullo, buticulario nullo ! We will let you see, 
pasque-Dieu ! whether we are not a king ! ” 

Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power ; this 
softened his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings, — 
^^Do you see, Gossip Guillaume ? the grand warden of the 
keys, the grand butler, the grand Chamberlain, the grand 
seneschal are not worth the smallest valet. Kembember this, 
Gossip Coppenole. They serve no purpose, as they stand thus 
useless round the king ; they produce upon me the effect of the 
four Evangelists who surround the face of the big dock of the 
palace, and which Philippe Brille has just set in order afresh. 
They are gilt, but they do not indicate the hour ; and the 
hands can get on without them.’’ 

He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking 
his aged head, — 

Ho ! ho ! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I 
shall not gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier.’^ 

The person whom he designated by this name, took the 
papers into his hands again, and began to read aloud, — 

To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the 
provostship of Paris ; for the silver, making, and engraving 
of said seals, which hâve been made new because the others 
preceding, by reason of their antiquity and their worn condi- 
tion, could no longer be successfully used, twelve livres parisis. 

To Guillaume Frère, the sum of four livres, four sols par- 
isis, for his trouble and salary, for having nourished and fed 
the doves in the two dove-cots of the Hôtel des Tournelles, 
during the months of January, February, and March of this 
year ; and for this he hath given seven sextiers of barley. 

^^To a gray friar for confessing a criminal, four sols 
parisis.’’ 

The king listened in silence. From time to time he 


228 


NOTBE-DAME. 


coughed; then he raised tlie goblet to his lips and drank a 
drauglit with. a grimace. 

^^During this year there bave been made by the ordinance 
of justice, to the sound of the trumpet, through the squares of 
Paris, fifty-six proclamations. Account to be regulated. 

‘^For having searched and ransacked in certain places, in 
Paris as well as eîsewhere, for money said to be there con- 
cealed ; but nothing hath been found : forty-five livres parisis.’^ 
Bury a crown to unearth a sou ! said the king. 

. For having set in the Hôtel des ïournelles six panes 
of white glass in the place where the iron cage is, thirteen 
sols ; for having made and delivered by command of the king, 
on the day of the musters, four shields with the escutcheons of 
the said seigneur, encircled with garlands of roses ail about, 
six livres ; for two new sleeves to the king’s old doublet, 
twenty sols ; for a box of grease to grease the boots of the 
king, fifteen deniers ; a stable newly made to lodge the king’s 
black pigs, thirty livres parisis ; many partitions, planks, and 
trap-doors, for the safekeeping of the lions at Saint-Paul, 
twenty-two livres.” 

^^These be dear beasts,” said Louis XI. ^Ht matters not ; it 
is a fine magnificence in a king. There is a great red lion 
whom I love for his pleasant ways. Hâve you seen him. Mas- 
ter Guillaume ? Princes must hâve these terrifie animais ; for 
we kings must hâve lions for our dogs and tigers for our cats. 
The great befits a crown. In the day s of the pagans of Jupi- 
ter, when the people offered the temples a hundred oxen and a 
hundred sheep, the emperors gave a hundred lions and a hun- 
dred eagles. This was wild and very fine. The kings of 
France hâve al ways had roarings round their throne. Hever- 
theless, people must do me this justice, that I spend still less 
money on it than they did, and that I possess a greater mod- 
esty of lions, bears, éléphants, and léopards. — Go on. Master 
Olivier. We wished to say thus much to our Flemish friends.” 

Guillaume Eym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly 
mien, had the air of one of the bears of which his majesty was 
speaking. The king paid no heed. He had just dipped his 
lips into the goblet, and he spat out the beverage, saying 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS HIS JPRAYERS. 229 

“Foh! what a disagreeable potioD I ” The man who was read- 
ing continued : — 

“For feeding a rascally footpad, locked up these six months 
in the little cell of the flayer, until it should be determined 
what to do with him, six livres, four sols.” 

“ What’s that ? ” interrupted the king ; “ feed what ought to 
be hanged ! Pasqtie-Dieu ! I will give not a sou more for that 
nourishmeut. Olivier, corne to an understauding about the 
matter with Monsieur d’Estouteville, and préparé me this 
very evening the wedding of the gallant and the gallows. 
Kesnme.” 

Olivier made a mark with his thumb against the article of 
the “ rascally foot soldier,” and passed on. 

“ To Henriet Cousin, master executor of the high works of 
justice in Paris, the sum of S'i.7:';y sols parisis, to him assessed 
and ordained by monseigneui. fhe provost of Paris, for having 
bought, by order of the said ;rienr the provost, a great broad 
sword, serving to execute av/1 decapitate persons who are b}" 
justice condemned for their demerits, and lie hath caused the 
same to be garnished with a sheath and with ail things thereto 
appertaining ; and hath li/tewise caused to be repointed and 
set in order the old sv/ord, which had become broken and 
notched in executing justice on Messire Louis de Luxem- 
bourg, as will more frily appear . . .” 

The king interrupted: ‘^That suffices. I allow the sum 
with great good will. Those are expenses which I do not 
begrudge. I hpwo never regretted that money. Continue.” 

For having made over a great cage . . .” 

^‘Ah ! ” said the king, grasping the arms of his chair in 
both hands, I knew well that I came hither to this Bastille 
for some purpose. Hold, Master Olivier; I desire to see 
that cage myself. You shall read me the cost while I am 
examining it. Messieurs Flemings, corne and see this; ’tis 
curions.” 

Then he rose, leaned on the arm of his interlocutor, made a 
sign to the sort of mute who stood before the door to précédé 
him, to the two Flemings to follow' him, and quitted the room. 

The royal company was recruited; at the door of the retreat, 


230 


NOTBE-BAME. 


by men of arms, ail loaded down with iron, and by siender 
pages bearing flambeaux. It marched for some time through 
tbe interior of tbe gloomy donjon, pierced with staircases and 
corridors even in the very thickness of the walls. The cap- 
tain of the Bastille marched at their head, and caused the 
wickets to be opened before the bent and aged king, who 
coughed as he walked. 

At each wicket, ail heads were obliged to stoop, except that 
of the old man bent double with âge. ‘^Hum,’^ said he be- 
tween his gums, for he had no longer any teeth, ^^we are 
already quite prepared for the door of the sepulchre. For a 
low door, a bent passer.” 

At length, after having passed a final wicket, so loaded 
with locks that a quarter of an hour was required to open it, 
they entered a vast and lofty vaulted hall, in the centre of 
which they could distinguish by the light of the torches, a 
huge cubic mass of masçnry, iron, and wood. The interior 
was hollow. It was one of those 'famous cages of prisoners 
of State, which were çalled ^^the little daughters of the king.” 
In its walls there were two or three little Windows so closely 
trellised with stout iron bars, that the glass was not visible. 
The door was a large flat slab of stone, as on tombs ; the sort 
of door which serves for entrance only. Only here, the occu- 
pant was alive. 

The king began to walk slowly round the little édifice, 
examining it carefully, while Master Olivier, who followed 
him, read aloud the note. 

“For having made a great cage of wood of solid beams, 
timbers and wall-plates, measuring nine feet in length by 
eight in breadth, and of the height of seven feet between 
the. partitions, smoothed and clamped with great bolts of iron, 
which has been placed in a, chamber situated in one of the 
towers of the Bastille Saint- Antoine, in which cage is placed 
and detained, by command of the king our lord, a prisoner 
who formerly inhabited an old, décrépit, and ruined cage. 
There hâve been employed in making the said new cage, 
ninety-six horizontal beams, and fifty-two upright joists, ten 
Wall plates three toises long j there hâve been occupied nine- 


3I0NSIEUE LOUIS SATS RIS PRAYERS. 231 

teen carpenters to hew, work, and fit ail the said wood in the 
courtyard of the Bastille during twenty days.’’ 

Very fine heart of oak/’ said the king, striking the wood- 
work with his fist. 

“ There hâve been used in this cage,” contiimed the other, 
“two hundred and twenty great bolts of iron, of nine feet, 
and of eight, the rest of medium length, with the rowels, 
caps and counterbands appertaining to the said bolts ; weigh- 
ing, the said iron in ail, three thousand, seven hundred and 
thirty-five pounds ; beside eight great squares of iron, serving 
to attach the said cage in place with clamps and nails weigh- 
ing in ail two hundred and eighteen pounds, not reckoning 
the iron of the trellises for the Windows of the chamber 
wherein the cage hath been placed, the bars of iron for the 
door of the cage and other things.” 

^^’ïis a great deal of iron,” said the king, ^^to contain the 
light of a spirit.” 

The whole amounts to three hundred and seventeen livres, 
five sols, seven deniers.” 

“ Pasque-Dieit ! ” exclaimed the king. 

At this oath, which was the favorite of Louis XI., some one 
seemed to awaken in the interior of the cage ; the Sound of 
chains was heard, grating on the floor, and a feeble voice, 
which seemed to issue from the tomb was uplifted. Sire ! 
sire ! mercy ! ” The one who spoke thus could not be seen. 

Three hundred and seventeen livres, five sols, seven 
deniers,” repeated Louis XI. 

The lamentable voice which had proceeded from the cage 
had frozen ail présent, even Master Olivier himself. The 
king alone wore the air of not having heard. At his order. 
Master Olivier resumed his reading, and his majesty coldly 
continued his inspection of the cage. 

In addition to this there hath been paid to a mason who 
hath made the holes wherein to place the gratings of the 
Windows, and the floor of the chamber where the cage is, 
because that floor could not support this cage by reason of its 
weight, twenty-seven livres fourteen sols parisis.” 

The voice began to moan again. 


232 


NOTliE-BAME. 


Mercy, sire ! I swear to you that ’twas Monsieur the Car- 
dinal d’Angers and not I, who was guilty of treason.” 

The inason is bold ! ” said the king. Continue, Olivier.” 

Olivier continued, — 

^^To a joiner for window fraines, bedstead, hollow stool, and 
other things, twenty livres, two sols parisis.” 

The voice also continued. 

^^Alas, sire! will you not listen to me? I protest to you 
that ’twas not I who wrote the matter to Monseigneur de 
Guyenne, but Monsieur le Cardinal Balue.” 

“The joiner is dear,” quoth the king. “ Is that ail ? ” 

“No, sire. To a glazier, for the Windows of the said cham- 
ber, forty-six sols, eight deniers parisis.” 

“ Hâve mercy, sire ! Is it not enough to hâve given ail my 
goods to my judges, my plate to Monsieur de Torcy, my 
library to Master Pierre Doriolle, my tapestry to the gov- 
ernor of the Eoussillon ? I am innocent. I hâve been shiver- 
ing in an \ron cage for fourteen years. Hâve mercy, sire ! 
You will find your reward in heaven.” 

“ Master Olivier,” said the king, “ the total ? ” 

“ Three hundred sixty-seven livres, eight sols, three deniers 
parisis.” 

“Notre-Dame!” cried the king. “This is an outrageons 
cage ! ” 

He tore the book from Master Olivier’s hands, and set to 
rockoning it himself upon his fingers, examining the paper 
and the cage alternately. Meanwhile, the prisoner could be 
heard sobbing. This was lugubrious in the darkness, and 
their faces turned pale as they looked at each other. 

“ Pourteen years, sire ! Fourteen years now ! since the 
month of April, 1469. In the naine of the Holy Mother of 
God, sire, listen to me ! Diiring ail this time you hâve en- 
joyed the heat of the sun. Shall I, frail créature, never more 
behold the day ? Mercy, sire ! Be pitiful ! Clemency is a 
fine, royal virtue, which turns aside the currents of wrath. 
Does your majesty belle ve that in the hour of death it will be 
a great cause of content for a king never to hâve left any of- 
fence unpunished ? Besides, sire, I did not betray your maj- 


MON SIEUR LOUIS SM F, S HTS PRATERS. 


233 


esty, ’twas Monsieur d’Angers ; and I liave on my foot a very 
lieavy cliain, and a great bail of iron at the end, much heavier 
than it shoiüd be in reason. Eh ! sire ! Hâve pity on me ! ” 

“ Olivier,” cried the king, throwing back his head, “ I ob- 
serve that they charge me twenty sols a hogshead for plas- 
ter, while it is worth but twelve. You will refer back this 
account.” 

He turned his back on the cage, and set out to leave the 
room. The misérable prisoner divined from the removal 
of the torches and the noise, that the king was taking his 
departure. 

Sire ! sire ! ” he cried in despair. 

The door closed again. He no longer saw anything, and 
heard only the hoarse voice of the turnkey, singing in his ears 
this ditty, — 

“ Maître Jean Balue, 

A perdu la vue 
De ses évêchés. 

Monsieur de Verdun. 

N’en a plus pas un; 

Tous sont dépêchés.” * 

The king reascended in silence to his retreat, and his suite 
followed him, terrified by the last groans of the condemned 
man. Ail at once his majesty turned to the Governor of the 
Bastille, — 

“By the way,” said he, “was there not some one in that 
cage ? ” 

“ Pardieu, yes sire ! ” replied the governor, astounded by 
the question. 

“ And who was it ? ” 

“Monsieur the Bishop of Verdun.” 

The king knew this better than any one else. But it was a 
mania of his. 

“ Ah ! ” said he, with the innocent air of thinking of it for 
the first time, “ Guillaume de Harancourt, the friend of Mon- 
sieur the Cardinal Balue. A good devil of a bishop ! ” 

* Master Jean Balue has lost sight of his bishoprics. Monsieur of Ver- 
dun bas no longer one ; ail bave been killed off. 


234 


NOTRE-DAME, 


At the expiration of a few moments, the door of the retreat 
liad opened again, then closed upon tlie five personages whom 
the reader has seen at the beginning of this chapter, and who 
resumed their places, their whispered conversations, and their 
attitudes. 

During the king’s absence, several despatches had been 
placed on his table, and he broke the seals himself. Then he 
began to read them promptly, one after the other, made a sign 
to Master Olivier who appeared to exercise the office of 
minister, to take a pen, and without commiinicating to him 
the contents of the despatches, he began to dictate in a low 
voice, the replies which the latter wrote, on his knees, in an 
inconvénient attitude before the table. 

Guillaume Kym was on the watch. 

The king spoke so low that the Memings heard nothing of 
his dictation, except some isolated and rather unintelligible 
scraps, such as, — 

“ To maintain the fertile places by commerce, and the stérile 
by manufactures. . . . — To show the English lords our four 
bombards, London, Brabant, Bourg-en-Bresse, Saint-Omer 
... — Artillery is the cause of war being made more judi- 
ciously now. ... — To Monsieur de Bressuire, our friend. 
... — Armies cannot be maintained without tribute, etc. 

Once he raised his voice, — 

“ Fasque Dieu ! Monsieur the King of Sicily seals his let- 
ters with yellow wax, like a king of France. Perhaps we are 
in the wrong to permit him so to do. My fair cousin of Bur- 
gundy granted no armorial bearings with a field of gules. 
The grandeur of houses is assured by the integrity of préroga- 
tives. Note this, friend Olivier.’’ 

Again, — 

Oh ! oh ! ” said he, What a long message ! What doth 
our brother the emperor daim ? ” And running his eye over 
the missive and breaking his reading with interjection: 

Surely ! the Germans are so great and powerful, that it is 
hardly crédible — But let us not forget the old proverb : ^ The 
finest county is Flanders ; the finest duchy. Milan ; the linest 
kingdom, France.’ Is it not so. Messieurs Flemings ? ” 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS IIIS PRAYERS. 235 

Tliis time Coppenole bowed in company with Guillaume 
Rym. The hosier’s patriotism was tickled. 

The last despatch made Louis XI. frown. 

What is this ? he said, “ Complaints and fault finding 
against our garrisons in Picardy î Olivier, write with diligence 
to M. the Marshal de Kouault : — That discipline is relaxed. 
That the gendarmes of the unattached troops, the feudal 
nobles, the free archers, and the Swiss inflict infinité evils on 
the rustics. — That the military, not content with what they 
find in the houses of the rustics, constrain them with violent 
blows of cudgel or of lash to go and get wine, spices, and 
other unreasonable things in the town. — That monsieur the 
king knows this. That we undertake to guard our peuple 
against inconveniences, larcenies and pillage. — That such is 
our will, by our Lady ! — That in addition, it suits us not that 
any fiddler, barber, or any soldier varlet should be clad like a 
prince, in velvet, cloth of silk, and rings of gold. — That these 
vanities are hateful to God. — That we, who are gentlemen, 
content ourselves with a doublet of cloth at sixteen sols the 
ell, of Paris. — That messieurs the camp-folio wers can very 
well corne down to that, also. — Command and ordain. — To 
Monsieur de Kouault, our friend. — Good.’^ 

He dictated this letter aloud, in a firm tone, and in jerks. 
At the moment when he finished it, the door opened and gave 
passage to a new personage, who precipitated himself into the 
chamber, crying in affright, — 

Sire ! sire ! there is a sédition of the populace in Paris ! ” 

Louis XI.’s grave face contracted ; but ail that was visible 
of his émotion passed away like a flash of lightning. He con- 
trolled himself and said with tranquil severity, — 

“ Gossip Jacques, y ou enter very abruptly ! ” 

Sire ! sire ! there is a revoit ! ’’ repeated Gossip J acques 
breathlessly. 

The king, who had risen, grasped him roughly by the arm, 
and said in his ear, in such a manner as to be heard by him 
alone, with concentrated rage and a sidelong glance at the 
Flemings, — 

“ Hold your tongue ! or speak low ! 


236 


NOTRE-DAME. 


The new corner undçrstood, and began in a low tone to give 
a vçry terrified açcount, to which the king listened calmly, 
while Guillaume Eym called Coppenole’s attention to the face 
and dress of the new arrivai, to his furred cowl, (caputia four- 
rata), his short cape, (epitogia curta), his robe of black velvet, 
which bespoke a president of the court of accounts. 

Hardly had this personage given the king some explana- 
tions, when Louis XI. exclaimed, bursting into a laugh, — 

In truth ? Speak aloud, Gossip Coictier ! What call is 
there for you to talk so low ? Our Lady knoweth that we con- 
ceal nothing from our good friends the Flemings.’^ 

“ But sire. . . 

“ Speak loud ! 

Gossip Coictier was struck dumb with surprise. 

So,” resumed the king, — speak sir, — there is a commo- 
tion among the louts in our good city of Paris ? ” 

“Yes, sire.” 

^‘And which is moving you say, against monsieur the 
bailiff of the Palais-de- Justice ? ” 

So it appears,” said the gossip, who still stammered, utterly 
astounded by the abrupt and inexplicable change which had 
just taken place in the king’s thoughts. 

Louis XI. continued : Where did the watch meet the rab- 
ble ? ” 

“Marching from the Grand Truanderie, towards the Pont- 
aux-Changeurs. I met it myself as I was on my way hither to 
obey your majesty’s commands.. I heard some of them shout- 
ing : ‘ Down with the bailiff of the palace ! ’ ” 

And what complaints hâve they against the bailiff ? ” 

Ah ! ” said Gossip Jacques, because he is their lord.” 
Really ? ” 

^^Yes, sire. They are knaves from the Cour-des-Miracles. 
They hâve been complaining this long while, of the bailiff, 
whose vassals they are. They do not wish to recognize him 
either as judge or as voyer ?” * 

^^Yes, certainly ! ” retorted the king with a smile of satis- 
faction which he strove in vain to disguise. 

* One in charge of the highways. 


MONSIEUR LOUIS S ATS HIS PRAYERS. 


237 


In ail their pétitions to tlie Parliament, they daim to hâve 
but two masters. Yoiir majesty and their God, who is the 
devil, I believe.’^ 

“ Eh ! eh ! ’’ said the king. 

He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth 
which makes the countenance beam ; he was unable to dissim- 
ulate his joy, although he endeavored at moments to compose 
himself. No one nnderstood it in the least, not even Master 
Olivier. He remained silent for a moment, with a thoughtful 
but contented air. 

“ Are they in force ? ’’ he suddenly inquired. 

“Yes, assuredly, sire/’ replied Gossip Jacques. 

How many ? ” 

Six thousand at the least.” 

The king could not refrain from saying : Good ! ” he went 
on, — 

Are they armed ?” 

'^With Scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. Ail sorts of 
very violent weapons.” 

The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list. 
Jacques considered it his duty to add, — 

^df your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, 
he is lost.” 

We will send,” said the king with an air of false serious- 
ness. It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bai- 
liff is our friend. Six thousand ! They are desperate scamps ! 
Their audacity is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it. 
But we hâve only a few people about us to-night. To-morrow 
morning will be time enough.” 

Gossip Jacques exclaimed, ^^Instantly, sire! there will be 
time to sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the 
seignory, to hang the bailiff. Eor God’s sake, sire ! send 
before to-morrow morning.” 

The king looked him full in the face. ‘‘1 hâve told you 
to-morrow morning.” 

It was one of those looks to which one does not reply. 

After a silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more, — 

“ You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was — ” 


238 


NOTRE-BAME. 


He corrected himself. What is the bailiff’s feudal jurisdic- 
tion ? ’’ 

Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Eue Calendre as far 
as the Eue de l’Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the 
localities vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the 
church of Notre Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised 
the brim of his hat), which hôtels number thirteen, plus the 
Cour des Miracles, plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, 
plus the whole highway which begins at that Maladerie and 
ends at the Porte Sainte- Jacques. Of these divers places he 
^is voyer, high, niiddle, and low, justiciary, full seigneur.’^ 

Bless me ! ’’ said the king, scratching his left ear with his 
right hand, that makes a goodly bit of my city ! Ah ! mon- 
sieur the bailiff was king of ail that.” 

This time he did not correct himself. He continued dream- 
ily, and as though speaking to himself, — 

^^Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between 
your teeth a pretty slice of our Paris.” 

Ail at once he broke ont explosively, Pasque-Dieu ! 
What people are those who daim to be voyers, justiciaries, 
lords and masters in our domains ? who hâve their tollgates 
at the end of every field ? their gallows and their hangman 
at every cross-road among our people ? So that as the Greek 
believed that he had as many gods as there were fountains, 
and the Persian as many as he beheld stars, the Prenchman 
counts as many kings as he sees gibbets ! Pardieu I ffis an 
evil thing, and the confusion of it displeases me. I should 
greatly like to know whether it be the mercy of God that 
there should be in Paris any other lord than the king, any 
other judge than our parliament, any other emperor than 
ourselves in this empire ! By the faith of my soûl ! the day 
must certainly corne when there shall exist in France but one 
king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in para- 
dise but one God ! ” 

He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with 
the air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of 
hounds : Good, my people ! bravely doue ! break these false 
lords ! do your duty ! at them ! hâve at them ! pillage them I 


MONSlEUlî LOUIS S ATS HlS PRAYERS. 239 

take them ! sack them !... Ah ! you want to be kings, mes- 
seigneurs ? On, my people on ! ’’ 

Here he intermpted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though 
to take back his thought which had already half escaped, 
bent his piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons 
who surrounded him, and suddenly grasping his hat with 
both hands and staring full at it, he said to it: '‘Oh! I 
woiild burn you if you knew what there was in my head.’’ 

Then casting about him once more the cautions and uneasy 
glance of the fox re-entering his hole, — 

“No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff. Unfor- 
tunately, we hâve but few troops here at the présent moment, ''' 
against so great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow. 
The order will be transmitted to the City and every one who 
is caught will be immediately hung.” 

“ By the way, sire,” said Gossip Coictier, “ I had forgotten 
that in the first agitation, the watch hâve seized two laggards 
of the band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they 
are here.” 

“ If I desire to see them ! ” cried the king. “ What ! Pasque- 
Dieu ! You forget a thing like that ! Kun quick, you, Olivier ! 
Go, seek them ! ” 

Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment 
later with the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the 
guard. The first had a coarse, idiotie, drunken and aston- 
ished face. He was clothed in rags, and walked with one 
knee bent and dragging his leg. The second had a pallid 
and smiling countenance, with which the reader is already 
acquainted. 

The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a 
Word, then addressing the first one abruptly, — 

“ What’s your name ? ” 

“ Gieffroy Pincebourde.” 

“ Your trade.” 

“Outcast.” 

“ What were you going to do in this damnable sédition ? ” 

The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a 
stupid air, 


240 


NOTItË-DAMË. 


He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads wliere intelli- 
gence is about as miicli at its ease as a liglit beneath an 
extinguislier. 

I know not/’ said he. “ They went, I went.’^ 

“Were y ou not going to outrageously attack and pillage 
your lord, the bailiff of the palace ? 

I know that they were going to take something froin some 
one. That is all.’^ 

A soldier pointed out to the king a billhook which he had 
seized on the person of the vagabond. 

Do you recognize this weapon ? ’’ demanded the king. 
^^Yes; Tis my billhook; I am a vine-dresser.’’ 

“ And do you recognize this man as your companion ? ’’ 
added Louis XI,, pointing to the other prisoner. 

‘‘Xo, I do not know him.” 

“ That will do,’’ said the king, making a sign with his finger 
to the silent personage who stood motionléss beside the door, 
to whom we hâve already called the reader’s attention. 

“ Gossip Tristan, here is a man for you.” 

Tristan l’Hermite bowed. He gave an order in a low voice 
to two archers, who led away the poor vagabond. 

In the meantime, the king had approached the second pris- 
oner, who was perspiring in great drops : Your name ? ” 
^‘Sire, Pierre Gringoire.” 

Your trade ? ” 

“ Philosopher, sire.” 

How do you permit yourself, knave, to go and besiege our 
friend, monsieur the bailiff of the palace, and what hâve you 
to say concerning this popular agitation ? ” 

“ Sire, I had nothing to do with it.” 

Corne, now ! you wanton wretch, were not you appre- 
hended by the watch in that bad company ? ” 

^^Xo, sire, there is a mistake. ’Tis a fatality. I make 
tragédies. Sire, I entreat your majesty to listen to me. I 
am a poet. ’Tis the melancholy way of men of my profession 
to roam the streets by night. I was passing there. It was 
mere chance. I was unjustly arrested ; I am innocent of this 
civil tempest. Your majesty sees that the vagabond did 
not recognize me. I conjure your majesty — ” 


MONSIEUM LOUIS SAYS HIS PIÎAYEBS, 241 

Hold your tongue ! ” said the kiiig, between two swallows 
of bis ptisan. “ You split our head ! ” 

Tristan l’Hermite advanced and pointing to Gringoire, — 

“ Sire, can tins one be hanged also ? ’’ 

This was the first word that lie had uttered. 

‘^riiew !” replied the king, “I see no objection.” 

“ I see a great inany ! ” said Gringoire. 

At that moment, our philosopher was greener than an olive. 
He peroeived from the king’s cold and indifferent mien that 
there was no other resource than something very pathetic, 
and he flung himself at the feet of Louis XI., exclaiming, 
with gestures of despair : — 

“Sire! will y our majesty deign to hear me. Sire! break 
not in thunder over so small a thing as myself. God’s great 
lightning doth not bombard a lettuce. Sire, you are an 
august and very puissant monarch ; hâve pity on a poor man 
who is honest, and who would find it more difficult to stir up 
a revoit than a cake of ice would to give out a spark ! Very 
gracious sire, kindness is the virtue of a lion and a king. 
Alas ! rigor only frightens minds ; the impetuous gusts of 
the north wind do not make the traveller lay aside his cloak ; 
the Sun, bestowing his rays little by little, warms hini in such 
wise that it will make him strip to his shirt. Sire, you are 
the Sun. I protest to you, my sovereign lord and master, that 
I ani not an outcast, thief, and disorderly fellow. Eevolt and 
brigandage belong not to the outfit of Apollo. I am not the 
man to fling myself into those clouds which break out into 
seditious clamor. I am your majesty ^s faithful vassal. That 
same jealousy which a hushand cherisheth for the honor of 
his wife, the resentment which the son hath for the love of 
his father, a good vassal should feel for the glory of his king ; 
he should pine away for the zeal of this ffouse, for the aggran- 
dizement of his service. Every other passion which should 
transport him would be but madness. These, sire, are my 
maxims of State : then do not judge me to be a seditious and 
thieving rascal because my garment is worn at the elbows. If 
you will grant me mercy, sire, I will wear it out on the knees 
in praying to God for you night and morning I Alas ! I am 


242 


NOTRE-DAME. 


not extremely rich, ’tis true. I am even rather poor. But 
not vicions on that account. It is not iny fault. Every one 
knoweth that great wealth is not to be drawn from literature, 
and that those who are best posted in good books do not 
always hâve a great fire in winter. The advocate’s trade 
taketh ail the grain, and leaveth only straw to the other 
scientific professions. There are forty very excellent proverbs 
anent the hole-ridden cloak of the philosopher. Oh, sire ! 
clemency is the only light which can enlighten the interior of 
so great a soûl. Clemency beareth the torch before ail the other 
virtues. Without it they are but blind men groping after 
God in the dark. Compassion, which is the same thing as 
clemency, causeth the love of subjects, which is the most 
powerful bodyguard to a prince. What matters it to your 
inajesty, who dazzles ail faces, if there is one poor man more 
on earth, a poor innocent philosopher spluttering amid the 
shadows of calamity, with an empty pocket which resounds 
against his hollow belly ? Moreover, sire, I am a man of let- 
ters. Great kings make a pearl for their crowns by protect- 
ing letters. Hercules did not disdain the title of Musagetes. 
Mathias Cor vin favored Jean de Monroyal, the ornament of 
mathematics. Now, ’tis an ill way to protect letters to hang 
men of letters. What a stain on Alexander if he had hung 
Aristoteles ! This act would not be a little patch on the face 
of his réputation to embellish it, but a very malignant ulcer 
to disfigure it. Sire ! I made a very proper epithalamium for 
Mademoiselle of Elanders and Monseigneur the very august 
Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rébellion. Your inajesty 
sees that I am not a scribbler of no réputation, that I hâve 
studied excellently well, and that I possess much natural élo- 
quence. Hâve mercy upon me, sire ! In so doing you will 
perform a gallant deed to our Lady, and I swear to you that 
I am greatly terrified at the idea of being hanged ! ’’ 

So saying, the unhappy Gringoire kissed the king’s slippers, 
and Guillaume Eym said to Coppenole in a low tone : He 
doth well to drag himself on the earth. Kings are like the 
Jupiter of Crete, they hâve ears only in their feet.’’ And 
without troubling himself about the Jupiter of Crete, the 


MONSIEUR LOUIS HIS PRAYERS. 


243 


liosier replied with a heavy smile, and his eyes fixed on 
Gringoire : Oh ! that’s it exactly ! I seein to hear Chancellor 
Hugonet craving mercy of me.” 

When Gringoire paused at last, qnite ont of breath, he 
raised his head tremblingly towards the king, who was engaged 
in scratching a spot on the knee of his breeches with his finger- 
nail; then his majesty began to drink froni the goblet of 
ptisan. But he uttered not a word, and this silence tortured 
Gringoire. At last the king looked at him. Here is a ter- 
rible bawler ! ” said he. Then, turning to Tristan l’Hermite 

Bah ! let him go ! ” 

Gringoire fell backwards, qnite thunderstruck with joy. 

‘^At liberty ! ” growled Tristan “Dothnotyour majesty 
wish to hâve him detained a little while in a cage ? ” 

Gossip,” retorted Louis XI., “ think you that ’tis for birds 
of this feather that we cause to be made cages at three hun- 
dred and sixty-seven livres, eight sous, three deniers apiece ? 
Release him at once, the wanton (Louis XI. was fond of this 
Word which formed, with Pasque-Dieu, the foundation of his 
joviality), and put him out with a buffet.” 

ügh ! ” cried Gringoire, “ what a great king is here ! ” 

And for fear of a counter order, he rushed towards the door, 
which Tristan opened for him with a very bad grâce. The 
soldiers left the room with him, pushing him before them 
with stout thwacks, which Gringoire bore like a true stoical 
philosopher. 

The king’s good humor since the revoit against the bailiff 
had been announced to him, made itself apparent in every 
way. This unwonted clemency was no small sign of it. Tris- 
tan l’Hermite in his corner wore the surly look of a dog who 
has had a bone snatched away from him. 

Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the 
arm of his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dis- 
sembling prince, but one who understood far better how to 
hide his troubles than his joy s. These external manifesta- 
tions of joy at any good news sometimes proceeded to very 
great lengths ; thus, on the death of Charles the Bold, to the 
point of vowing silver balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours j 


244 


NOTRE-DAME. 


on his ad vent to the throne, so far as forgetting to order his 
father’s obsequies. 

“Hé! sire!” suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, “what 
bas become of the acute attack of illness for which jour 
majesty had me summoned ? ” 

“ Oh ! ” said the king, “ I really suffer greatly, my gossip. 
There is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest.” 

Coictier took the king’s hand, and begun to feel of his puise 
with a knowing air. 

“Look, Coppenole,” said Lym, in a low voice. “Behold 
him between Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court. 
A physician for himself, a headsman for others.” 

As he felt the king’s puise, Coictier assumed an air of 
greater and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some 
anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man 
had no other farm than the king’s bad health. He speculated 
on it to the best of his ability. 

“ Oh ! oh !” he murmured at length, “ this is serions indeed.” 

“ Is it not ? ” said the king, uneasily. 

“ Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitansy irregularis^^ continued 
the leech. 

“ Pasque-Dieu ! ” 

“ This may carry off its man in less than three days.” 

“ Our Lady ! ” exclaimed the king. “ And the remedy, 
gossip ? ” 

“ I am meditating upon that, sire.” 

He made Louis XI. put ont his tongue, shook his head, 
made a grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations , — 

“ Pardieu, sire,” he suddenly said, “ I must tell you that 
there is a receivership of the royal prorogatives vacant, and 
that I hâve a nephew.” 

“I give the receivership to yoiir nephew, Gossip Jacques,” 
replied the king ; “ but draw this lire from my breast.” 

“Since your majesty is so clement,” replied the leech, “you 
will not refuse to aid me a little in building my house. Eue 
Saint- André-des- Arcs.” 

“ Heugh ! ” said the king. 

“ I am at the end of my finances,” pursued the doctor j 


MONSIEUR LOUIS S ATS HIS FRAYEES, 


245 


and it would really be a pity that tbe bouse should not bave a 
roof ; not on account of tbe bouse, wbicb is simple and tbor- 
ougbly bourgeois, but because of tbe paintings of Jeban Four- 
bault, wbicb adorn its wainscoating. Tbere is a Diana flying 
in tbe air, but so excellent, so tender, so délicate, of so ingén- 
iions an action, ber bair so well coiffed and adorned witb a 
crescent, ber flesb so wbite, tbat sbe leads into temptation 
tbose wbo regard ber too curiously. Tbere is also a Ceres. 
Sbe is anotber very fair divinity. Sbe is seated on sbeaves of 
wbeat and crowned witb a gallant garland of wbeat ears inter- 
laced witb salsify and otber flowers. IsTever were seen more 
amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a nobler air, or a more 
gracefully flowing skirt. Sbe is one of tbe most innocent 
and most perfect beauties wbom tbe brusb bas ever pro- 
duced.’’ 

“ Executioner ! ’’ grumbled Louis XI., ^^wbat are you driv- 
ing at ? ” 

I niust bave a roof for tbese paintings, sire, and, altbougb 
Tis but a small matter, I bave no more money.” 

How mucb dotb your roof cost ? ” 

Wby a roof of copper, embellisbed and gilt, two tbousand 
livres at tbe most.” 

Ab, assassin ! ” cried tbe king, '' He never draws ont one 
of my teetb wbicb is not a diamond.” 

Am I to bave my roof ? ” said Coictier. 

Yes ; and go to tbe devil, but cure me.” 

Jacques Coictier bowed low and said, — 

^'Sire, it is a repellent wbicb will save you. We will 
apply to your loins tbe great défensive composed of cerate, 
Armenian bole, wbite of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will con- 
tinue your ptisan and we will answer for your majesty. 

A burning candie does not attract one gnat alone. Master 
Olivier, perceiving tbe king to be in a liberal mood, and judg- 
ing tbe moment to be propitious, approacbed in bis turn. 

Sire — ” 

Wbat is it now ? ” said Louis XI. 

^^Sire, your majesty knowetb tbat Simon Radin is dead ? 

Well ? ” 


246 


NOTRE-DAME. 


“ He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts 
of the treasury.” 

“ Sire, his place is vacant/’ 

As he spoke thns, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its 
arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change 
which ever takes place in a conrtier’s visage. The king 

looked him well in the face and said' in a dry tone, — 

understand.” 

He resumed, — 

Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say, 
^There’s no master save the king, there are no fishes save 

in the sea.’ I see that y on agréé with Monsieur de Bouci- 

caut. Now listen to this ; we hâve a good memory. In ’68 
we made y ou valet of our chamber : in ’69, guardian of the 
fortress of the bridge of Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of 
Tournay in wages (y ou wanted thein of Paris). In Novem- 
ber, ’73, by letters given to Gergeole, we instituted you 
keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place of Gilbert 
Acle, equerry; in ’75, gruyer* of the forest of Bouvray-lez- 
Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in ’78, we 
graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed doubly 
with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you and 
your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the 
School Saint-Germain; in ’79, we made you gruyer of the 
forest of Senart, in place of that poor J ehan Daiz ; then cap- 
tain of the Château of Loches ; then governor of Saint- 
Quentin; then captain of the bridge of Meulan, of which 
you cause yourself to be called comte. Ont of the five sols 
fine paid by every barber who shaves on a festival day, there 
are three sols for you and we hâve the rest. We hâve been 
good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais (The Evil), 
which resembled your face too closely. In ’76, we granted 
you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial bear- 
ings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of a 
peacock. Pasque-Dieu ! Are not you surfeited ? Is not the 
draught of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous ? Are you 

* A lord having a right on the woods of his vassals. 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS HIS FRAYEES. 247 

not afraid that one salinon more will make your boat sink ? 
Pride will be your ruin, gossip. Kuin and disgrâce always 
press hard on the heels of pride. Consider tbis and bold 
your tongue.’’ 

Tbese words, uttered witb severity, made Master Olivier’s 
face revert to its insolence. 

“ Good ! ” he muttered, almost aloud, ’tis easy to see that 
the king is ill to-day ; he giveth ail to the leech.’^ 

Louis XI. far from being irritated by this pétulant insult, 
resumed with some gentleness, Stay, I was forgetting that I 
made y ou my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, 
gentlemen/’ added the king turning to the Flenîings, ^^this 
man hath been an ambassador. There, my gossip/’ he pur- 
sued, addressing Master Olivier, ^Get us not get angry; we 
are old friends. ’Tis very late. We hâve terminated our 
labors. Shave me.” 

Our readers hâve not, without doubt, waited until the prés- 
ent moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible 
Figaro whom Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled 
so artistically in the long and bloody comedy of the reign of 
Louis XI. We will not here undertake to develop that singu- 
lar figure. This barber of the king had three names. At 
court he was politely called Olivier le Daim (the Deer) ; 
among the people Olivier the Devil. His real name was 
Olivier le Mauvais. 

Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulk- 
ing at the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier. 

Yes, yes, the physician ! ” he said between his teeth. 

^‘Ah, yes, the physician!” retorted Louis XI., with singu- 
lar good humor; ‘^the physician has more crédit than you. 
’Tis very simple; he has taken hold upon us by the whole 
body, and you hold us only by the chin. Corne, my poor 
barber, ail will corne right. What would you say and what 
would become of your office if I were a king like Chilpéric, 
whose gesture consisted in holding his beard in one hand ? 
Corne, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go get what 
you need therefor.” 

Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to 


248 


NOTBE-BAME. 


laugh, and that there was no way of even annoying hiin, went 
off grumbling to execute Ms orders. 

The king rose, approached the window, and snddenly open- 
ing it with extraordinary agitation, — 

Ob ! yes ! ’’ lie exclaimed, clapping Ms hands, yonder is 
a redness in the sky over the City. ’Tis the bailiff burniiig. 
It can be nothing else but that. Ah ! my good people ! here 
you are aiding me at last in tearing down the rights of 
lordship ! 

Then turning towards the Flemings : Corne, look at this, 
gentlemen. Is it not a tire which gloweth yonder ? 

The two men of Ghent drew near. 
great fire,’^ said Guillaume Rym. 

“ Oh ! exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, 
that reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur 
d’Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revoit yonder.’’ 

^^You think so. Master Coppenole?” And Louis XI.’s 
glance was almost as joyous as that of the hosier. Will it 
not be difficult to resist ? ” 

“Cross of God ! Sire! Your majesty will damage many 
companies of men of war thereon.” 

“ Ah ! I ! ’tis different,” returned the king. “ If I willed.” 

The hosier replied hardily, — 

“ If this revoit be what I suppose, sire, you might will in 
vain.” 

“ Gossip,” said Louis XI., “ with the two companies of my 
unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short 
Work is made of a populace of louts.” 

The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume 
Eym, appeared determined to hold Ms own against the king. 

“ Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of 
Burgundy was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose 
at that rabble rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried : 
‘ Men of the cannon ! Tire on the villains ! ’ and he swore by 
Saint-George. But Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on 
the handsome duke with his battle-club and his people, and 
when the glittering Burgundian army came in contact with 
these peasants in bull hides, it flew in pièces like a pane of 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS BIS PRAYER8. 249 


glass at tlie blow of a pebble. Many lords were then slain 
by low-born knaves ; and Monsieur de Cbâteau-Guyon, tbe 
greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead, with bis gray 
borse, in a little marsb meadow.’^ 

“Friend/^ returned tbe king, ^^you are speaking of a battle. 
The question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain tbe upper 
band of it as soon as it sball please me to frown.” 

Tbe otber replied indifferently, — 

“ That may be, sire ; in that case, ’tis because tbe people^s 
hour hatb not yet corne/’ 

Guillaume Bym considered it incumbent on him to inter- 
vene, — 

Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.” 

I know it,” replied tbe hosier, gravely. 

Let bim speak, Monsieur Bym, my friend/’ said tbe king ; 

love tbis frankness of speecb. My fatber, Charles tbe 
Seventh, was accustomed to say that tbe truth was ailing ; I 
thought ber dead, and that sbe had found no confessor. Mas- 
ter Coppenole undeceiveth me.” 

Tben, laying bis band familiarly on Coppenole’s sboulder, — 

“You were saying, Master Jacques ? ” 

“ I say, sire, that you may possibly be in tbe right, that tbe 
bour of tbe people may not yet bave corne witb you.” 

Louis XI. gazed at bim witb bis penetrating eye, — 

“ And wben will that hour corne, master ? ” 

“ You will hear it strike.” 

“ On wbat dock, if you please ? ” 

Coppenole, witb bis tranquil, and rustic countenance, made 
tbe king approacb tbe window. 

“Listen, sire ! There is here a* donjon keep, a belfry, can- 
nons, 'bourgeois, soldiers ; wben tbe belfry sball bum, wben 
tbe cannons sball roar, wben tbe donjon sball fall in ruins 
amid great noise, wben bourgeois and soldiers sball bowl and 
slay each otber, tbe hour will strike.” 

Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained 
silent for a moment, then he gently patted with bis band 
tbe tbick wall of tbe donjon, as one strokes tbe bauncbes of 
a steed. 


250 


NOTBE-DAME. 


Oh ! no ! ’’ said he. You will not crumble so easily, will 
you, my good Bastille ? 

And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy 
Fleming, — 

^^Have you never seen a revoit, Master Jacques ? ’’ 

I hâve inade them,’^ said the hosier. 

“ How do you set to work to inake a revoit ? ’’ said the 
king. 

^^Ah!” replied Coppenole, ^^’tis not very difficult. There 
are a hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discon- 
tent in the city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the 
character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to 
stir into revoit. They always love the prince’s son ; the prince, 
never. Well ! One morning, I will suppose, some one enters 
my shop, and says to me : ^ Father Coppenole, there is this 
and there is that, the Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save 
her ministers, the grand bailiff is doubling the impost on 
shagreen, or something else,’ — what you will. I leave my 
work as it stands, I corne ont of my hosier’s stall, and I shout : 
‘ To the sack ? ’ There is always some smashed cask at hand. 
I niount it, and I say aloud, in the first words that occur to 
me, what I hâve on my heart.; and when one is of the people, 
sire, one always has something on the heart. Then people 
troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm bell, they arm the 
louts with what they take from the soldiers, the market people 
join in, and they set out. And it will always be thus, so long 
as there are lords in the seignories, bourgeois in the bourgs, 
and peasants in the country.” 

^^And against whom do you thus rebel ? ’’ inquired the king 5 

against your bailiffs ? against your lords ? ’’ 

Sometimes ; that dépends. Against the duke, also, some- 
times.” 

Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a 
smile, — 

Ah ! here they hâve only got as far as the bailiffs.’’ 

At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed 
by two pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles ; but what 
struck Louis XI. was that he was also accompanied by the 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS HIS PRAYERS. 251 

provost of Paris and the chevalier of the watch, who appeared 
to be in consternation. The spiteful barber also wore an air 
of consternation, which was one of contentment beneath, how- 
ever. It was he who spoke first. 

“ Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news 
which I bring.’^ 

The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor 
with the feet of his chair, — 

“ What does this mean ? ” 

“ Sire,’’ resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of 
a man who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, 
^^’tis not against the bailiff of the courts that this popular 
sédition is directed.” 

Against whom, then ? ” 

“Against you, sire ?’ 

The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man, — 

“ Explain yourself, Olivier ! And guard your head well, 
gossip ; for I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if 
you lie to us at this hour, the sword which severed the head 
of Monsieur de Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot 
yet sever yours ! ” 

The oath was formidable ; Louis XI. had only sworn twice 
in the course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô. 

Olivier opened his mouth to reply. 

“Sire — ” 

“On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tris- 
tan, hâve an eye to this man.” 

Olivier knelt down and said coldly, — 

“ Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of 
parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are 
trying to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the 
provost and monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who hâve 
just corne from the riot, are here to give me the lie if this is 
not the truth. The populace is besieging Notre-Dame.” 

“Yes, indeed !” said the king in a low voice, ail pale and 
trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame ! They lay siégé to our 
Lady, my good mistress in her cathédral! — Rise, Olivier. 
You are right. I give you Simon Eadin’s charge. You are 


252 


NOTBE-BAME. 


right. ’Tis I whom they are attacking. The witch is under 
the protection of this church, the church is under my protec- 
tion. And I thought that they were acting against the bailiff ! 
’Tis against inyself ! 

Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and 
down with long strides. He no longer laughed, he was ter- 
rible, he went and came ; the fox was changed into a hyæna. 
He seeined suffocated to such a degree that he could not 
speak ; his lips moved, and his fleshless fists were clenched. 
Ail at once he raised his head, his hollow eye appeared full 
of light, and his voice burst forth like a Clarion : ‘‘ Down with 
them, Tristan ! A heavy hand for these rascals ! Go, Tris- 
tan, niy friend ! slay ! slay ! 

This éruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and 
said with cold and concentrated wrath, — 

Here, Tristan ! There are here with us in the Bastille the 
fifty lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hun- 
dred horse : you will take them. There is also the company 
of our unattached archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers : you 
will take it. You are provost of the marshals ; you hâve the 
iiien of your provostship : you will take them. At the Hôtel 
Saint-Pol you will find forty archers of monsieur the dau- 
phin ’s new gnard : you will take them. And, with ail these, 
you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah î messieurs, louts of 
Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against the crown of 
France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of this 
commonwealth ! Exterminate, Tristan ! exterminate ! and let 
not a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.’’ 

Tristan bowed. ’Tis well, sire 

He added, after a silence, And what shall I do with the 
sorceress ? ’’ 

This question caused the king to meditate. 

Ah ! ” said he, the sorceress ! Monsieur d’Estouteville, 
what did the people wish to do with lier ? ’’ 

Sire,’’ replied the provost of Paris, I imagine that since 
the populace has corne to tear her from her asylum in Notre- 
Dame, ’tis because that impunity wounds them, and they 
desire to hang her.” 


MONSIEUR LOUIS SAYS IIIS PRAYERS. 253 


The king appeared to reflect deeply : then, addressing Tris- 
tan l’Hermite, ^‘Well! gossip, exterminate the people and 
hang the sorceress.” 

‘^That’s itj” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, ^^pun- 
ish the people for willing a thing, and then do what they 
wish/’ 

^‘Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. ^^If the sorceress is 
still in Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the 
sanctnary ? ” 

Pasque-Dieu ! the sanctnary ! ” said the king, scratching 
his ear. “ But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.” 

Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself 
on his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the 
Seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which 
loaded it down, “ Oh ! ” said he, with clasped hands, “ our 
Lady of Paris, my gracions patroness, pardon me. I will only 
do it this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure 
y ou, madame the virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorce- 
ress who is not worthy of y our amiable protection. You 
know, madame, that many very pions princes hâve over- 
stepped the privilèges of the churches for the glory of God 
and the necessities of the State. Saint Hugues, bishop of 
England, permitted King Edward to hang a witch in his 
church. Saint-Louis of France, my master, transgressed, with 
the same object, the church of Monsieur Saint-Paul; and 
Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jérusalem, the very 
church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this 
once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will 
give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last 
year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.” 

He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once 
more, and said to Tristan, — 

^^Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with 
you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will 
crush the populace. You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. 
And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. 
You will render me an account of it. Corne, Olivier, I shall 
not go to bed this night. Shave me.” 


254 


NOTBE-BAME, 


Tristan FHermite bowed and departed. Then the king, 
dismissing Kyin and Coppenole with a gesture, — 

God gnard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. 
Go, take a little repose. The night advances, and we are 
nearer the morning than the evening.’’ 

Both retired and gained their apartments under the guid- 
ance of the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guil- 
laume Bym, — 

Hum ! I hâve had enough of that coughing king ! I hâve 
seen Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant 
than Louis XI. when ailing.’’ 

Master J acques,’’ replied Eym, ’tis because wine renders 
kings less cruel than does barley water.’^ 




CHAPTER VL 

LITTLE SWORD IN POCKET. 

On emerging from tlie Bastille, Gringoire descended the Rue 
Saint-Antoine with the swiftness of a riinaway horse. On 
arriving at the Baudoyer gâte, he walked straight to the stone 
cross which rose in the iniddle of that place, as though he 
were able to distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man 
clad and cloaked in black, who was seated on the steps of the 
cross. 

Is it you, master ? said Gringoire. 

The personage in black rose. 

“ Death and passion ! You make me boil, Gringoire. The 
man on the tower of Saint-Gervais has just cried half-past 
one o’clock in the morning.’’ 

“ Oh,” retorted Gringoire, Tis no fault of mine, but of the 
watch and the king. I hâve just had a narrow escape. I 
always just miss being hung. ^Tis my prédestination.” 

You lack everything,” said the other. “ But corne quickly. 
Hâve you the password ? ” 

‘‘ Fancy, master, I hâve seen the king. I corne from him. 
He wears fustian breeches. ^Tis an adventure.” 

“ Oh ! distaff of words ! what is your adventure to me ! 
Hâve you the password of the outcasts ? ” 

I hâve it. Be at ease. ‘ Little sword in pocket.’ ” 

Good. Otherwise, we could not make our way as far as 
the church. The outcasts bar the streets. Eortunately, it 

255 


256 


NOTUE-DAME. 


appears tliat they hâve encoufitered résistance. We may still 
arrive in time.’^ 

Yes, master, but how are we to get into Notre-Dame 

I hâve the key to the tower.’’ 

“ And how are we to get ont again ? 

^‘Behind the cloister there is a little door which opens on 
the Terrain and the water. I hâve taken the key to it, and I 
moored a boat there this morning.’’ 

hâve had a beautiful escape from being hung!^^ Grin- 
goire repeated. 

Eh, quick ! corne ! said the other. 

Both descended towards the city with long strides. 



K 



CHAPTER VIL 

CHATEAUPERS TO THE RESCUE. 

The reader will, perhaps, recall the critical situation in 
which we left Quasimodo. The brave deaf man, assailed on 
ail sides, had lost, if not ail courage, at least ail hope of sav- 
ing, not himself (he was not thinking of himself), but the 
gypsy. He ran distractedly along the gallery. Notre-Dame 
was on the point of being taken by storm by the outcasts. 

. AU at once, a great galloping of horses filled the neighboring 
streets, and, with a long file of torches and a thick column of 
cavaliers, with free reins and lances in rest, these furious 
sounds debouched on the Place like a hurricane, — 

France ! France ! eut down the louts ! Châteaupers to 
the rescue ! Provostship ! Provostship ! 

The frightened vagabonds wheeled round. 

Quasimodo who did not hear, saw the naked swords, the 
torches, the irons of the pikes, ail that cavalry, at the head of 
which he recognized Captain Phœbus ; he beheld the confusion 
of the outcasts, the terror of some, the disturbance among the 
bravest of them, and from this unexpected succor he recov- 
ered so much strength, that he hurled from the church the 
first assailants who were already climbing into the gallery. 

It was, in fact, the king’s troops who had arrived. 

The vagabonds behaved bravely. They defended themselves 
like desperate men. Caught on the flank, by the Eue Saint- 

257 


258 


NOTBE-BAME. 


Pierre-aux-Boeufs, and in the rear through the Bue du Parvis, 
driven to bay against Notre-Dame, which they still assailed 
and Quasimodo defended, at the same time besiegers and be- 
sieged, they were in the singular situation in which Comte 
Henri Harcourt, Taurinum obsessor idem et obsessus, as his 
epitaph says, found himself later on, at the famous siégé of 
Turin, in 1640, between Prince Thomas of Savoy, whom he 
was besieging, and the Marquis de Leganez, who was block- 
ading him. 

The battle was frightful. There was a dog’s tooth for wolPs 
flesh, as P. Mathieu says. The king’s cavaliers, in whose 
midst Phœbus de Châteaupers bore himself valiantly, gave no 
quarter, and the slash of the sword disposed of those who 
escaped the thrust of the lance. The outcasts, badly armed 
foamed and bit with rage. Men, women, children, hurled 
themselves on the cruppers and the breasts of the horses, and 
hung there like cats, with teeth, finger nails and toe nails. 
Others struck the archers’ in the face with their torches. 
Others thrust iron hooks into the necks of the cavaliers and 
dragged them down. They slashed in pièces those who fçll. 

One was noticed who had a large, glittering scythe, and who, 
for a long time, mowed the legs of the horses. He was fright- 
ful. He was singing a ditty, with a nasal intonation, he 
swung and drew back his scythe incessantly. At every blow 
he traced around him a great circle of severed limbs. He 
advanced thus into the very thickest of the cavalry, with the 
tranquil slowness, the lolling of the head and the regular 
breathing of a harvester attacking a field of wheat. It was 
Clopin Trouillefou. A shot from an arquebus laid him low. 

In the meantime, Windows had been opened again. The 
neighbors hearing the war cries of the king’s troops, had min- 
gled in the affray, and bullets rained upon the outcasts from 
every story. The Parvis was filled with a thick smoke, which 
the musketry streaked with fiame. Through it one could con- 
fusedly distinguish the front of Notre-Dame, and the décrépit 
Hôtel-Dieu with some wan invalids gazing down from the 
heights of its roof ail checkered with dormer Windows. 

At length the vagabonds gave way. Weariness, the lack of 


CHATEAUPERS TO THE RE SC UE. 


259 


good weapons, the friglit of this surprise, the musketry from 
the Windows, the valiant attack of the kiiig’s troops, ail over- 
whelmed them. They forced the line of assailants, and fled 
in every direction, leaving the Parvis encumbered with dead. 

When Quasimodo, who had not ceased to fight for a mo- 
ment, beheld this ront, he fell on his knees and raised his 
hands to heaven; then, intoxicated with joy, he ran, he 
ascended with the swiftness of a bird to that cell, the 
approaches to which he had so intrepidly defended. He had 
but one thought now ; it was to kneel before her whom he 
had just saved for the second time. 

When he entered the cell, he found it empty. 




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BOOK ELEVENTH. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE LITTLE SHOE. 

La Esmeralda was sleeping at the moment when the out- 
casts assailed the church. 

Soon the ever-increasing uproar around the édifice, and the 
nneasy bleating of her goat which had been awakened, had 
roused her from her sliimbers. She had sat up, she had lis- 
tened, she had looked ; then, terrified by the light and noise, 
she had rnshed from her cell to see. The aspect of the Place, 
the vision which Avas moving in it, the disorder of that noc- 
turnal assault, that hideous crowd, leaping like a cloud of 
frogs, half seen in the gloom, the croaking of that hoarse 
multitude, those feAV red torches rünning and Crossing each 
other in the darkness like the meteors which streak the 
misty surfaces of marshes, this whole scene produced upon her 
the effect of a mysterious battle between the phantoms of the 
witches’ sabbath and the stone monsters of the church. Im- 
bued from her very infancy with the superstitions of the 
Bohemian tribe, her first thought was that she had caught the 
strange beings peculiar to the night, in their deeds of witch- 
craft. Then she ran in terror to cower in her cell, asking of 
her pallet some less terrible nightmare. 

261 


262 


NOTRE-DAME. 


But little by little tlie first vapors of terror had been dissi- 
pated ; from the constantly increasing noise, and from many 
other signs of reality, sbe felt herself besieged not by spectres, 
but by human beings. Then ber fear, thougb it did not in- 
crease, changed its character. She had dreamed of the pos- 
sibility of a popular inutiny to tear her from her asylum. 
The idea of once more recovering life, hope, Phœbus, who was 
ever présent in her future, the extreme helplessness of her 
condition, flight eut off, no support, her abandonment, her 
isolation, — these thoughts and a thousand others overwhelmed 
her. She fell upon her knees, with her head on her bed, her 
hands clasped over her head, full of anxiety and tremors, and, 
although a gypsy, an idolater, and a pagan, she began to 
entreat with sobs, mercy from the good Christian God, and 
to pray to our Lady, her hostess. For even if one believes 
in nothing, there are moments in life when one is always of 
the religion of the temple which is nearest at hand. 

She remained thus prostrate for a very long time, trembling 
in truth, more than praying, chilled by the ever-closer breath 
of that furious multitude, understanding nothing of this out- 
burst, ignorant of what was being plotted, what was being 
done, what they wanted, but foreseeing a terrible issue. 

In the midst of this anguish, she heard some one walking 
near her. She turned round. Two men, one of whom carried 
a lantern, had just entered her cell. She uttered a feeble cry. 

Fear nothing,’^ said a voice which was not unknown to her, 
^Gtisl.’’ 

Who are you ? ’’ she asked. 

Pierre Gringoire.” 

This name reassured her. She raised her eyes once more, 
and recognized the poet in very fact. But there stood beside 
him a black figure veiled from head to foot, which struck her 
by its silence. 

“Oh!” continued Gringoire in a tone of reproach, “Djali 
recognized me before you ! ” 

The little goat had not, in fact, waited for Gringoire to an- 
nounce his name. No sooner had he entered than it rubbed 
itself gently against his knees, covering the poet with caresses 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 263 

and with white hairs, for it was shedding its hair. Gringoire 
returned the caresses. 

Who is this with you ? ” said the gypsy, in a low voice. 

^^Be at ease,” replied Gringoire. ^^’Tis one of my fmends.” 

Then the philosopher setting his lantern on the ground, 
crouched upon the stones, and exclaimed enthusiastically, as 
he pressed Djali in his arms, — 

Oh ! ’tis a graceful beast, more considérable no doubt, for 
it’s neatness than for its size, but ingénions, subtle, and let- 
tered as a grammarian ! Let us see, my Djali, hast thou for- 
gotten any of thy pretty tricks ? How does Master Jacques 
Charmolue ? . . .’^ 

The man in black did not allow him to finish. He ap- 
proached Gringoire and shook him roughly by the shoulder. 
Gringoire rose. 

^Tis true,’’ said he : I forgot that we are in haste. But 
that is no reason master, for getting furious with people in 
this manner. My dear and lovely child, your life is in danger, 
and Djali’s also. They want to hang you again. We are 
your friends, and we hâve corne to save you. Follow us.” 

Is it true ? ” she exclaimed in dismay. 

Yes, perfectly true. Corne quickly !” 
am willing,” she stammered. ^^But why does not your 
friend speak ? ” 

Ah ! ” said Gringoire, Tis because his father and mother 
were fantastic people who made him of a tacituru tempéra- 
ment.” 

She was obliged to content herself with this explanation. 
Gringoire took her by the hand ; his companion picked up the 
lantern and walked on in front. Fear stunned the young girl. 
She allowed herself to be led away. The goat followed them, 
frisking, so j oyons at seeing Gringoire again that it made him 
stumble every moment by thrusting its horns between his 
legs. 

^^Such is life,” said the philosopher, every time that he 
came near falling down ; Tis often our best friends who 
cause us to be overthrown.” 

They rapidly descended the staircase of the towers, crossed 


264 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the church, full of shadows and solitude, and ail rever- 
berating with nproar, which formed a frightful contrast, and 
emerged into the courtyard of the cloister by the red door. 
The cloister was deserted ; the canons had lied to the bishop’s 
palace in order to pray together ; the courtyard was empty, a 
few frightened lackeys were crouching in dark corners. They 
directed their steps towards the door which opened from this 
court upon the Terrain. The man in black opened it with a 
key which he had about him. Our readers are aware that the 
Terrain was a tongue of land enclosed by walls on the side of 
the City and belonging to the chapter of Notre-Dame, which 
terminated the island on the east, behind the church. They 
found this enclosure perfectly deserted. There was here less 
tuinult in the air. The roar of the outcasts’ assault reached 
them more confusedly and less clamorously. The fresh breeze 
which follows the current of a stream, rustled the leaves of 
the only tree planted on the point of the Terrain, with a noise 
that was already perceptible. But they were still very close 
to danger. The nearest édifices to them were the bishop’s 
palace and the church. It was plainly évident that there was 
great internai commotion in the bishop’s palace. Its shadowy 
mass was ail furrowed with lights which flitted from window 
to window ; as, when one has just burned paper, there remains 
a sombre édifice of ashes in which bright sparks run a thou- 
sand eccentric courses. Beside them, the enormous towers of 
Notre-Dame, thus viewed from behind, with the long nave 
above which they rise eut out in black against the red and 
vast light which filled the Parvis, resembled two gigantic 
andirons of some cyclopean fire-grate. 

What was to be seen of Paris on ail sides wavered before 
the eye in a glooni mingled with light. Bembrandt has such 
backgrounds to his pictures. 

The man with the lantern walked straight to the point of 
the Terrain. There, at the very brink of the water, stood the 
wormeaten remains of a fence of posts latticed with laths, 
whereon a low vine spread out a few thin branches like the 
fingers of an outspread hand. Behind, in the shadow cast by 
this trellis, a little boat lay concealed. The man made a sign 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 


265 


to Gringoire and his companion to enter. The goat followed 
them. The inan was the last to step in. Then he eut the 
boat’s moorings, piished it froin the shore with a long boat- 
hook, and, seizing two oars, seated himself in the bow, rowing 
with ail his inight towards midstream. The Seine is very 
rapid at this point, and he had a good deal of trouble in 
leaving the point of the island. 

Gringoire’s first care on entering the boat was to place the 
goat on his knees. He took a position in the stern ; and the 
young girl, whom the stranger inspired with an indefinable 
uneasiness, seated herself close to the poet. 

When OUI* philosopher felt the boat sway, he clapped his 
hands and kissed Djali between the horns. 

Oh ! ’’ said he, now we are safe, ail four of us.’’ 

He added with the air of a profound thinker, “ One is 
indebted sometimes to fortune, sometimes to ruse, for the 
happy issue of great enterprises.” 

The boat made its way slowly towards the right shore. The 
young girl watched the unknown man with secret terror. He 
had carefully turned off the light of his dark lantern. A 
glimpse could be caught of him in the obscurity, in the bow 
of the boat, like a spectre. His cowl, which was still lowered, 
formed a sort of mask ; and every time that he spread his 
arms, upon which hung large black sleeves, as he rowed, one 
would hâve said they were two huge bat’s wings. Moreover, 
he had not yet uttered a word or breathed a syllable. No 
other noise was heard in the boat than the splashing of the 
•oars, mingled with the rippling of the water along her sides. 

“ On my soûl ! ” exclaimed Gringoire suddenly, we are as 
cheerful and joyous as young owls ! We preserve the silence 
of Pythagoreans or fishes ! Fasque-Dleu ! my friends, I should 
greatly like to hâve some one speak to me. The human voice 
is music to the human ear. ’Tis not I who say that, but 
Hidymus of Alexandria, and they are illustrions words. 
Assuredly, Hidymus of Alexandria is no médiocre philoso- 
pher. — One Word, my lovely child ! say but one word to me, 
I entreat y ou. By the way, y ou had a droll and peculiar 
little pout ; do you still make it ? Ho you know, my dear, 


266 


NOTBE-BAME. 


that parliament hath full jurisdiction over ail places of asy« 
lum, and that you were running a great risk in your little 
chamber at Notre-Dame ? Alas ! the little bird trochylus 
maketh its nest in the jaws of the crocodile. — Master, here 
is the moon re-appearing. If only they do not perçoive us. 
We are doing a laudable thing in saving mademoiselle, and 
yet we should be hung by order of the king if we were caught. 
Alas ! human actions are taken by two handles. That is 
branded with disgrâce in one which is crowned in another. He 
admires Cicero who blâmes Catiline. Is it not so, master ? 
What say you to this philosophy ? I possess philosophy by 
instinct, by nature, ut apes geometriam. — Corne ! no one 
answers me. What unpleasant moods you two are in ! I 
must do ail the talking alone. That is what we call a mono- 
logue in tragedy. — Fasque-Dieu ! I must inf orm you that I 
hâve just seen the king, Louis XI., and that I hâve caught 
this oath from him, — Fasque-Dieu ! They are still making a 
hearty howl in the city. — ^Tis a villanous, malicious old king. 
He is ail swathed in furs. He still owes me the money for 
my epithalamium, and he came within a nick of hanging me 
this evening, which would hâve been very inconvénient to 
me. — He is niggardly towards men of merit. He ought to 
read the four books of Salvien of Cologne, Adversus Ava- 
ritiam. In truth ! ’Tis a paltry king in his ways with men of 
letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties. He is 
a sponge, to soak money raised from the people. His saving 
is like the spleen which swelleth with the leanness of ail the 
other members. Hence complaints against the hardness of 
the times become murmurs against the prince. Under this 
gentle and pions sire, the gallows crack with the hung, the 
blocks rot with blood, the prisons burst like over full bellies. 
This king hath one hand which grasps, and one which hangs. 
He is the procurator of Dame Tax and Monsieur Gibbet. 
The great are despoiled of their dignities, and the little 
incessantly overwhelmed with fresh oppressions. He is an 
exorbitant prince. I love not this monarch. And you, 
master ? 

The man in black let the garrulous poet chatter on. He 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 


267 


continued to struggle against the violent and narrow current, 
wliich séparâtes the prow of the City and the stem of the 
island of Notre Dame, which we call to-day the Isle St. Louis. 

By the way, master ! ’’ continued Gringoire suddenly. 

At the moment when we arrived on the Parvis, through the 
enraged outcasts, did your reverence observe that poor little 
devil whose skull your deaf man was just cracking on the 
railing of the gallery of the kings ? I am near sighted and I 
could not recognize him. Do you know who he could be ? 

The stranger answered not a word. But he suddenly ceased 
rowing, his arms fell as though broken, his head sank on his 
breast, and la Esmeralda heard him sigh convulsively. She 
shuddered. She had heard such sighs before. 

The boat, abandoned to itself, floated for several minutes 
with the stream. But the man in black finally recovered him- 
self, seized the oars once more and began to row against the 
current. He doubled the point of the Isle of Notre Dame, 
and made for the landing-place of the Port au Foin. 

Ah!’^ said Gringoire, “yonder is the Barbeau mansion. — 
Stay, master, look ; that group of black roofs which make 
such singular angles yonder, above that heap of black, fibrous 
grimy, dirty clouds, where the moon is completely crushed 
and spread out like the yolk of an egg whose shell is broken. — 
^Tis a fine mansion. There is a chapel crowned with a small 
vault full of very well carved enrichments. Above, you can 
see the bell tower, very delicately pierced. There is also a 
pleasant garden, which consists of a pond, an aviary, an écho, 
a mall, a labyrinth, a house for wild beasts, and a quantity of 
leafy alleys very agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascal 
of a tree which is called ‘ the lewd,’ because it favored the 
pleasures of a famous princess and a constable of France, who 
was a gallant and a wit. — Alas ! we poor philosophers are to 
a constable as a plot of cabbages or a radish bed to the garden 
of the Louvre. What matters it, after ail ? human life, for 
the great as well as for us, is a mixture of good and evil. Pain 
is always by the side of joy, the spondee by the dactyl. — 
Master, I must relate to you the history of the Barbeau man- 
sion. It ends in tragic fashion. It was in 1319, in the reign 


268 


NOTRE-DAME. 


of Philippe V., the longest reign of the kings of France. The 
moral of the story is that the temptations of the liesh are 
pernicious and nialignant. Let us not rest our glance too long 
on our neighbor’s wife, however gratified our senses may be 
by her beauty. Fornication is a very libertine thought. 
Adultery is a prying into the pleasures of others — Ohé ! the 
noise yonder is redoubling ! ” 

The tumult around Notre Dame was, in fact, increasing. 
They listened. Cries of victory were heard with tolerable 
distinctness. Ail at once, a hundred torches, the light of 
which glittered upon the hemlets of men at arms, spread over 
the church at ail heights, on the towers, on the galleries, on 
the flying buttresses. These torches seemed to be in search 
of something; and soon distant clamors reached the fugi- 
tives distinctly : — “ The gypsy ! the sorceress ! death to the 
gypsy ! ” 

The unhappy girl dropped her head upon her hands, and 
the unknown began to row furiously towards the shore. Mean- 
while our philosopher reflected. He clasped the goat in his 
arms, and gently drew away from the gypsy, who pressed 
doser and doser to him, as though to the only asylum which 
remained to her. 

It is certain that Gringoire was enduring cruel perplexity. 
He was thinking that the goat also, according to existing 
laAV,’’ would be hung if recaptured ; which would be a great 
pity, poor Djali ! that he had thus two condemned créatures 
attached to him ; that his companion asked no better than to 
take charge of the gypsy. A violent combat began between 
his thoughts, in which, like the Jupiter of the Iliad, he weighed 
in turn the gypsy and the goat ; and he looked at them alter- 
nately with eyes moist with tears, saying- between his teeth : 
“ But I cannot save you both ! ” 

A shock informed them that the boat had reached the land 
at last. The uproar still filled the city. The unknown rose, 
approached the gypsy, and endeavored to take her arm to 
assist her to alight. She repulsed him and clung to the sleeve 
of Gringoire, who, in his turn, absorbed in the goat, almost 
repulsed her. Then she sprang alone from the boat. She 


THE LITTLE SHOE, 


269 


was so troubled that she did not know what she did or wliither 
slie was going. Thus she reraained for a moment, stunned, 
watching the water flow past ; when she gradually returned to 
her senses, she found herself alone on the wharf with the 
unknown. It appears that Gringoire had taken advantage of 
the moment of debarcation to slip away with the goat into the 
block of houses of the Eue Grenier-sur-FEau. 

The poor gypsy shivered when she beheld herself alone 
with this man. She tried to speak, to cry out, to call Griii- 
goire ; her tongue was dumb in her mouth, and no Sound left 
her lips. Ail at once she felt the stranger’s hand on hers. 
It was a strong, cold hand. Her teeth chattered, she turned 
paler than the ray of moonlight which illuminated her. The 
man spoke not a work. He began to ascend towards the 
Place de Grève, holding her by the hand. 

At that moment, she had a vague feeling that destiny is an 
irrésistible force. She had no more résistance left in her, 
she allowed herself to be dragged along, running while he 
walked. At this spot the quay ascended. But it seemed to 
her as though she were descending a slope. 

She gazed about her on ail sides. Not a single passer-by. 
The quay was absolutely deserted. She heard no sound, she 
felt no people moving save in the tumultuous and glowing 
city, from which she was separated only by an arm of the 
Seine, and whence her name reached her, mingled with cries 
of “ Death ! ” The rest of Paris was spread around her in 
great blocks of shadows. 

Meanwhile, the stranger continued to drag her along with 
the same silence and the same rapidity. She had no recollec- 
tion of any of the places where she was walking. As she 
passed before a lighted window, she made an effort, drew up 
suddenly, and cried out, Help ! ’’ 

The bourgeois who was standing at the window opened it, 
appeared there in his shirt with his lamp, stared at the quay 
with a stupid air, uttered some words which she did not un- 
derstand, and closed his shutter again. It was her last gleam 
of hope extinguished. 

The man in black did not utter a syllable ; he held her firmly, 


270 


NOTRE-DAME. 


and set ont again at a quicker pace. She no longer resisted, 
but followed ïiiin, completely broken. 

Froni time to tiine she called together a little strength, and 
said, in a voice broken by the unevenness of the pavement 
and the breathlessness of their flight, Who are you ? Who 
are you ? He made no reply. 

They arrived thus, still keeping along the quay, at a toler- 
ably spacious square. It was the Grève. In the middle, a 
sort of black, erect cross was visible ; it was the gallows. She 
recognized ail this, and saw where she was. 

The man halted, turned towards her and raised his cowl. 

“ Oh ! ’’ she stammered, almost petrified, I knew well that 
it was he again ! 

It was the priest. He looked like the ghost of himself; 
that is an effect of the moonlight, it seems as though one 
beheld only the spectres of things in that light. 

Listen ! he said to her ; and she shuddered at the Sound 
of that fatal voice which she had not heard for a long time. 
He continued speaking with those brief and panting jerks, 
which betoken deep internai convulsions. Listen! we are 
here. I am going to speak to you. This is the Grève. This 
is an extreme point. Destiny gives us to one another. I am 
going to décidé as to your life ; you will décidé as to my soûl. 
Here is a place, here is a night beyond which one sees noth- 
ing. Then listen to me. I am going to tell you. ... In the 
first place, speak not to me of your Phœbus. (As he spoke 
thus he paced to and fro, like a man who cannot remain in one 
place, and dragged her after him.) Do not speak to me of 
him. Do you see ? If you utter that naine, I know not what 
I shall do, but it will be terrible.’’ 

Then, like a body which recovers its centre of gravity, 
he became motionless once more, but his words betrayed no 
less agitation. His voice grew lower and lower. 

^^Do not turn your head aside thus. Listen to me. It is a 
serions matter. In the first place, here is what lias happened. 
— Ail this will not be laughed at. I swear it to you. — What 
was I saying ? Eemind me ! Oh ! — There is a decree of 
Parliament which gives you back to the scaffold. I hâve just 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 271 

rescued you from their hands. But they are pursuing you. 
Look ! ” 

He extended his arm toward the City. The search seemed, 
in fact, to be still in progress there. The uproar drew nearer ; 
the tower of the lieutenant’s house, situated opposite the 
Grève, was full of clamors and light, and soldiers could be 
seen running on the opposite quay with torches and these 
cries, The gypsy ! Where is the gypsy ! Death ! Death ! 

^‘You see that they are in pursuit of you, and that I am 
not lying to you. I love you. — Do not open your mouth ; 
refrain from speaking to me rather, if it be only to tell me 
that you hâte me. I hâve made up my mind not to hear that 
again. — I hâve just saved you. — Let me finish first. I can 
save you wholly. I hâve prepared everything. It is yours at 
will. If you wish, I can do it.’’ 

He broke ofî violently. “No, that is not what I should 
say ! ” 

As he went with hurried step and made her hurry also, for 
he did not release her, he walked straight to the gallows, and 
pointed to it with his finger, — 

“ Choose between us two,” he said, coldly. 

She tore herself from his hands and fell at the foot of the 
gibbet, embracing that funereal support, then she half turned 
her beautiful head, and looked at the priest over her shoulder. 
One would hâve said that she was a Holy Virgin at the foot of 
the cross. The priest remained motionless, his finger still 
raised toward the gibbet, preserving his attitude like a statue. 

At length the gypsy said to him, — 

“ It causes me less horror than you do.” 

Then he allowed his arm to sink slowly, and gazed at the 
pavement in profound dejection. 

“ If these stones could speak,” he murmured, “ yes, they 
would say that a very unhappy man stands here. 

He went on. The young girl, kneeling before the gallows, 
enveloped in her long flowing hair, let him speak on without 
interruption. He now had a gentle and plaintive accent which 
contrasted sadly with the haughty harshness of his features. 

“ I love you. Oh ! how true that is ! So nothing cornes of 


272 


NOTRE-DAME. 


that fire which burns my beart ! Alas ! yoving girl, nigbt and 
day — y es, night and day I tell y ou, — it is torture. Oh! I 
suffer too much, my poor child. ^Tis a tliing deserving of 
compassion, I assure you. You see that I speak gently to 
you. I really wish tliat you sliould no longer cherish tliis 
horror of me. — After ail, if a man loves a woman, ’tis not his 
fault ! — Oh, my God ! — What ! So you will ne ver pardon me ? 
You will always hâte me ? Ail is over then. It is that which 
renders me evil, do you see? and horrible to myself. — You 
will not even look at me ! You are thinking of something 
else, perchance, while I stand here and talk to you, shudder- 
ing on the brink of eternity for both of us ! Above ail 
things, do not speak to me of the officer ! — I would cast 
myself at your knees, I would kiss not your feet, but the earth 
which is under your feet ; I would sob like a child, I would 
tear from my breast not words, but my very heart and vitals, 
to tell you that I love you ; — ail would be useless, ail ! — And 
yet you hâve nothing in your heart but what is tender and 
merciful. You are radiant with the most beautiful mildness ; 
you are wholly sweet, good, pitiful, and charming. Alas ! 
You cherish no ill will for any one but me alone ! Oh ! what 
a fatality ! ” 

He hid his face in his hands. The young girl heard him 
weeping. It was for the first time. Thus erect and shaken 
by sobs, he was more misérable and more suppliant than when 
on his knees. He wept thus for a considérable time. 

Corne ! he said, these first tears passed, I hâve no more 
words. I had, however, thought well as to what you would 
say. ISTow I tremble and shiver and break down at the déci- 
sive moment, I feel conscious of something suprême envelop- 
ing us, and I stammer. Oh ! I shall fall upon the pavement 
if you do not take pity on me, pity on yourself. Do not con- 
demn us both. If you only knew how much I love you ! 
What a heart is mine ! Oh ! 'what désertion of ail virtue ! 
What desperate abandonment of myself ! A doctor, I mock at 
science ; a gentleman, I tarnish my own name ; a priest, I 
make of the missal a pillow of sensuality, I spit in the face of 
my God ! ail this for thee, enchantress ! to be more worthy 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 


273 


of thy hell ! And you will not hâve the apostate ! Oh ! let 
me tell you ail ! more still, something more horrible, oh ! yet 
more horrible \ J’ 

As he uttered these last words, his air became utterly dis- 
tracted. He was silent for a moment, and resumed, as though 
speaking to himself, and in a strong voice, — 

“ Gain, what hast thou doue with thy brother ? ’’ 

There was another silence, and he went on : — 

What hâve I doue with him. Lord ? I received him, I 
reared him, I nourished him, I loved him, I idolized him, and 
I hâve slain him ! Yes, Lord, they hâve just dashed his 
head before my eyes on the stone of thine house, and it is 
because of me, because of this woman, because of her.” 

His eye was wild. His voice grew ever weaker ; he repeated 
many times, yet, mechanically, at tolerably long intervals, 
like a bell prolonging its last vibration : “ Because of lier. — 
Because of her.’^ 

Then his tongue no longer articulated any perceptible 
Sound ; but his lips still moved. Ail at once he sank to- 
gether, like something crumbling, and lay motionless on the 
earth, with his head on his knees. 

A touch from the young girl, as she drew her foot from 
under him, brought him to himself. He passed his hand 
slowly over his hollow cheeks, and gazed for several moments 
at his fingers, which were wet, What ! ” he murmured, I 
hâve wept ! ” 

And turning suddenly to the gypsy with unspeakable an- 
guish, — 

“ Alas ! you hâve looked coldly on at my tears ! Child, do 
you know that those tears are of lava ? Is it indeed true ? 
Nothing touches when it cornes from the man whom one does 
not love. If you were to see me die, you would laugh. Oh ! 
I do not wish to see you die ! One word ! A single word of 
pardon ! Say not that you love me, say only that you will do 
it ; that will sufïice ; I will save you. If not — oh ! the hour 
is passing. I entreat you by ail that is sacred, do not wait 
until I shall hâve turned to stone again, like that gibbet which 
also daims you ! Eeflect that I hold the destinies of both of 


2T4 


NOTBE-BAME. 


us in my hand, that I am mad, — it is terrible, — that I may 
let ail go to destruction, and that there is beneath us a bot- 
tomless abyss, unhappy girl, whither my fall will follow yours 
to ail eternity ! One word of kindness ! Say one word ! 
only one word ! ’’ 

She opened her mouth to answer hiin. He flung himself on 
his knees to reçoive with adoration the word, possibly a ten- 
der one, which was on the point of issuing from her lips. She 
said to him, You are an assassin ! ’’ 

The priest clasped her in his arms with fury, and began to 
laugh with an abominable laugh. 

^^Well, y es, an assassin!’’ he said, ^^and I will hâve y ou. 
You will not hâve me for your slave, y ou shall hâve me for 
your master. I will hâve you ! I hâve a den, whither I will 
drag you. You will follow me, you will be obliged to follow 
me, or I will deliver you up ! You must die, my beauty, or be 
mine ! belong to the priest ! belong to the apostate ! belong 
to the assassin ! this very night, do you hear ? Corne ! joy ; 
kiss me, mad girl ! The tomb or my bed ! ” 

His eyes sparkled with impurity and rage. His lewd lips 
reddened the young girl’s neck. She struggled in his arms. 
He covered her with furious kisses. 

Do not bite me, monster ! ” she cried. Oh ! the foui, 
odious monk ! leave me ! I will tear out thy ugly gray hair 
and fling it in thy face by the handful ! ” 

He reddened, turned pale, then released her and gazed at 
her with a gloomy air. She thought herself victorious, and 
continued, — 

I tell you that I belong to my Phœbus, that ’tis Phoebus 
whom I love, that ’tis Phœbus who is handsome ! you are old, 
priest ! you are ugly ! Begone ! ” 

He gave vent to a horrible cry, like the wretch to whom a 
hot iron is applied. « Die, then ! ” he said, gnashing his teeth. 
She saw his terrible look and tried to fly. He caught her 
once more, he shook her, he flung her on the ground, and 
walked with rapid strides towards the corner of the Tour- 
Roland, dragging her after him along the pavement by her 
beautiful hands. 


THE LITTLE SIIOE. 


275 


On arriving there, he tiirned to her, — 

^^For the last time, will y ou be mine ?’’ 

She replied with emphasis, — 

‘‘No/’ 

Then he cried in a loud voice, — 

“ Gudule ! Gudule ! here is the gypsy ! take your ven- 
geance ! ” 

The young girl felt herself seized suddenly by the elbow. 
She looked. A fleshless arm was stretched from an opening 
in the wall, and held her like a hand of iron. 

“ Hold her well,” said the priest ; “ ’tis the gypsy escaped. 
Eelease her not. I will go in search of the sergeants. You 
shall see her hanged.” 

A gutteral laugh replied from the interior of the wall to 
these bloody words : — “ Hah ! hah ! hah ! ” — The gypsy 
watched the priest retire in the direction of the Pont Notre- 
Dame. A cavalcade was heard in that direction. 

The young girl had recognized the spiteful recluse. Pant- 
ing with terror, she tried to disengage herself. She writhed, 
she made many starts of agony and despair, but the other held 
her with incredible strength. The lean and bony fingers 
which bruised her, clenched on her flesh and met around it. 
One would hâve said that this hand was riveted to her arm. 
It was more than a chain, more than a fetter, more than a ring 
of iron, it was a living pair of pincers endowed with intelli- 
gence, which emerged from the wall. 

She fell back against the wall exhausted, and then the fear 
of death took possession of her. She thought of the beauty 
of life, of youth, of the view of heaven, the aspects of nature, 
of her love for Phœbus, of ail that was vanishing and ail that 
was approaching, of the priest who was denouncing her, of 
the headsman who was to corne, of the gallows which was 
there. Then she felt terror mount to the very roots of her 
hair and she heard the mocking laugh of the recluse, saying 
to her in a very low tone : “ Hah ! hah ! hah ! you are going 
to be hanged ! ” 

She turned a dying look towards the window, and she 
beheld the fierce face of the sacked nun through the bars. 


276 


NOTRE-DAME. 


What hâve I done to you ? ’’ she said, almost lifeless. 
ïhe recluse did not reply, but began to mumble with a sing- 
song irritated, luocking intonation : “ Daughter of Egypt ! 
daughter of Egypt ! daughter of Egypt ! ’’ 

The unhappy Esmeralda dropped her head beneath her flow- 
ing hair, comprehending that it was no human being she had 
to deal with. 

Ail at once the recluse exclaimed, as though the gypsy’s 
question had taken ail this time to reach her brain, — 

^ What hâve you done to me ? ’ you say ! Ah ! what hâve 
you done to me, gypsy ! Well! listen. — I had a child ! you 
see ! I had a child ! a child, I tell you ! — a pretty little 
girl ! — my Agnès ! ’’ she went on wildly, kissing something in 
the dark. — Well ! do you see, daughter of Egypt ? they took 
my child from me ; they stole my child ; they ate my child. 
That is what you hâve done to me.’’ 

The young girl replied like a lamb, — 

Alas ! perchance I was not boni then ! ” 

^^Oh! yes ! ^‘returned the recluse, ‘^you must hâve been 
boni. You were among them. She would be the saine âge as 
you ! so ! — I hâve been here fifteen years ; fifteen years hâve 
I suffered ; fifteen years hâve I prayed ; fifteen years hâve I 
beat my head against these four walls — I tell you that ’twas 
the gypsies who stole her from me, do you hear that ? and 
who ate her with their teeth. — Hâve you a heart ? imagine a 
child playing, a child sucking ; a child sleeping. It is so inno- 
cent a thing ! — Well ! that, that is what they took from me, 
what they killed. The good God knows it well ! To-day, it 
is my tiirn ; I am going to eat the gypsy. — Oh ! I would bite 
you well, if the bars did not prevent me ! My head is too 
large ! — Poor little one ! while she was asleep ! And if they 
woke her up when they took her, in vain she might cry ; I was 
not there ! — Ah ! gypsy mothers, you devoured my child ! 
corne see your own.” 

Then she began to laugh or to gnash her teeth, for the two 
things resembled each other in that furious face. The day 
was beginning to dawn. An ashy gleam dimly lighted this 
scene, and the gallows grew more and more distinct in the 


THE LITTLE SIIOE. 


27T 


square. On the other side, in the direction of the bridge of 
Notre-Dame, the poor condemned girl fancied that she heard 
the Sound of cavalry approaching. 

Madam,’’ she cried, clasping her hands and falling on her 
knees, dishevelled, distracted, inad with fright ; ^^madam ! hâve 
pity ! They are coming. I hâve done nothing to you. Would 
you wish to see me die in this horrible fashion before your 
very eyes ? You are pitiful, I am sure. It is too frightful. 
Let me make my escape. Kelease me ! Mercy. I do not 
wish to die like that ! 

“ Give me back my child ! ” said the recluse. 

“ Mercy ! Mercy ! ’’ 

Give me back my child ! ’’ 

Eelease me, in the name of heaven ! ’’ 

Give me back my child ! 

Again the young girl fell ; exhausted, broken, and having 
already the glassy eye of a person in the grave. 

Alas ! ’’ she faltered, you "seek your child, I seek my 
parents.’’ 

Give me back my little Agnès ! ” pursued Gudule. You 
do not know where she is ? Then die ! — I will tell you, I 
was a woman of the town, I had a child, they took my child. 
It was the gypsies. You see plainly that you must die. 
When your mother, the gypsy, cornes to reclaim you, I shall 
say to her : ‘ Mother, look at that gibbet ! — Or, give me back 
my child. Do you know where she is, my little daughter ? 
Stay ! I will show you. Here is her shoe, ail that is left me 
of her. Do you know where its mate is ? If you know, tell 
me, and if it is only at the other end of the world, I will 
crawl to it on my knees.” 

As she spoke thus, with her other arm extended through 
the window, she showed the gypsy the little embroidered shoe. 
It was already light enough to distinguish its shape and its 
colors. 

Let me see that shoe,” said the gypsy, quivering. God ! 
God ! ” 

And at the saine time, with her hand which was at liberty, 
she quickly opened the little bag ornamented with green glass, 
which she wore about her neck. 


278 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Go on, go on ! grumbled Gudule, search your demon’s 
amulet ! ’’ 

Ail at once, she stopped short, trembled in every limb, and 
cried in a voice which proceeded from the very depths of her 
being : “ My daughter ! ’’ 

The gypsy had just drawn from the bag a little shoe abso- 
lutely similar to the other. To this little shoe was attached 
a parchment on which was inscribed this charm, — 

Quand le pareil retrouveras 
Ta mère te tendras les bras.* 

Quicker than a flash of lightning, the recluse had laid the 
two shoes together, had read the parchment and had put close 
to the bars of the window her face beaming with celestial joy 
as she cried, — 

My daughter ! my daughter ! ’’ 

My mother ! ” said the gÿpsy. 

Here we are unequal to the task of depicting the scene. 

The wall and the iron bars were between them. Oh ! the 
wall ! ” cried the recluse. Oh ! to see her and not to em- 
brace her ! Your hand ! your hand ! 

The young girl passed her arm through the opening ; the 
recluse threw herself on that hand, pressed her lips to it and 
there remained, buried in that kiss, giving no other sign of 
life than a sob which heaved her breast from time to time. 
In the meanwhile, she wept in torrents, in silence, in the dark, 
like a rain at night. The poor mother poured ont in floods 
upon that adored hand the dark and deep well of tears, which 
lay within her, and into which her grief had filtered, drop by 
drop, for fifteen years. 

Ail at once she rose, flung aside her long gray hair from her 
brow, and without uttering a word, began to shake the bars of 
her cage cell, with both hands, more furiously than a lioness. 
The bars held firm. Then she went to seek in the corner of 
her cell a huge paving stone, which served her as a pillow, 

* When thou shalt find its mate, thy mother will stretch out her arms 
to thee. 


TUE LITTLE SHOE. 


279 


and launched it against them with such violence that one of 
the bars broke, einitting tliousands of sparks. A second blow 
completely shattered the old iron cross which barricaded the 
window. Then with her two hands, she finished breaking 
and removing the rusted stuinps of the bars. There are 
moments when woman’s hands possess superhuman strength. 

A passage broken, less than a minute was required for her 
to seize her daughter by the middle of her body, and draw her 
into her cell. Corne let me draw you ont of the abyss/’ she 
murmured. 

When her daughter was inside the cell, she laid her gently 
on the ground, then raised her up again, and bearing her in 
her arm s as though she were still only her little Agnès, she 
walked to and fro in her little room, intoxicated, frantic, j oy- 
ons, crying outf singing, kissing her daughter, talking to her, 
bursting into laughter, melting into tears, ail at once and with 
vehemence. 

“ My daughter ! my daughter ! ’’ she said. ‘‘ I hâve my 
daughter ! here she is ! The good God has given her back to 
me ! Ha you ! corne ail of you ! Is there any one there to 
see that I hâve my daughter ? Lord Jésus, how beautiful she 
is ! You hâve made me wait fifteen years, my good God, but 
it was in order to give her back to me beautiful. — Then the 
gypsies did not eat her ! Who said so ? My little daughter ! 
my little daughter ! Kiss me. Those good gypsies ! I love 
the gypsies ! — It is really you ! That was what made my 
heart leap every time that you passed by. And I took that 
for hatred ! Forgive me, my Agnès, forgive me. You thought 
me very malicious, did you not ? I love you. Hâve you still 
the little mark on jour neck ? Let us see. She still has it. 
Oh ! you are beautiful ! It was I who gave you those big 
eyes, mademoiselle. Kiss me. I love you. It is nothing to 
me that other mothers hâve children; I scorn them now. 
They hâve only to corne and see. Here is mine. See her 
neck, her eyes, her hair, her hands. Find me anything as 
beautiful as that ! Oh ! I promise you she will hâve lovers, 
that she will ! I hâve wept for fifteen years. Ail my beauty 
has departed and has fallen to her. Kiss me.’’ 


280 


NOTRE-DAME. 


She adciressed to her a thousand other extravagant remarks, 
whose accent constituted their sole beauty, disarranged the 
poor girl’s garments even to the point of making her blush, 
smoothed her silky hair with her hand, kissed her foot, her 
knee, her brow, her eyes, was in raptures over everything. 
The young girl let her hâve her way, repeating at intervals 
and very low and with infinité tenderness, ^^My mother ! 

‘^Do you see, my little girl,^^ resumed the recluse, inter- 
spersing her words with kisses, I shall love you dearly ? 
We will go away from here. We are going to be very happy. 
I hâve inherited something in Keims, in our country. You 
know Eeims ? Ah ! no, you do not know it ; you were too 
small ! If you only knew how pretty you were at the âge of 
four months ! Tin y feet that peuple came even from Epernay, 
which is seven leagues away, to see ! We shall» hâve a field, a 
house. I will put you to sleep in my bed. My God ! my 
God ! who would believe this ? I hâve my daughter ! 

Oh, my mother ! ’’ said the young girl, at length finding 
strength to speak in her émotion, the gypsy woman told me 
so. There was a good gypsy of our band who died last year, 
and who always cared for me like a nurse. It was she who 
placed this little bag about my neck. She always said to me : 
^Little one, guard this jewel well ! ’Tis a treasure. It will 
cause thee to find thy mother once again. Thon wearest thy 
mother about thy neck.’ — The gypsy predicted it ! ” 

The sacked nun again pressed her daughter in her arms. 
Corne, let me kiss you ! You say that prettily. When we 
are in the country, we will place these little shoes on an 
infant Jésus in the church. We certainly owe that to the 
good, holy Virgin. What a pretty voice you hâve ! When 
you spoke to me just now, it was music ! Ah ! my Lord God ! 
I hâve found my child again ! But is this story crédible ? 
Nothing will kill one — or I should hâve died of joy.” 

And then she began to clap her hands again and to laugh 
and to cry out : “ We are going to be so happy ! ” 

At that moment, the cell resounded with the clang of arms 
and a galloping of horses which seemed to be coming from 
the Pont Notre-Dame, and advancing farther and farther 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 281 

along the qnay. The gypsy threw herself with anguish into 
the arms of theisacked nun. 

‘‘ Save me ! save me ! mother ! they are coming ! 

“ Oh, heaven ! what are you saying ? I had forgotten ! 
They are in pursnit of you ! What hâve you doue ? ’’ 

kuow not/^ replied the unhappy childj “but I am con- 
demued to die.’^ 

“ To die ! ” said Gudule, staggering as though struck by 
lightning; “to die!’’ she repeated slowly, gaziug at her 
daughter with staring eyes. 

“Yes, mother,” replied the frightened young girl, “they 
want to kill me. They are coming to seize me. That gal- 
lows is for me ! Save me ! save me ! They are coming ! 
Save me ! ” 

The recluse remained for several moments motionless and 
petrified, then she moved her head in sign of doubt, and snd- 
denly giving vent to a burst of laughter, but with that terri- 
ble langh which had corne back to her, — 

“ Ho ! ho ! no ! ’tis a dream of which you are telling me. 
Ah, yes ! I lost her, that lasted fifteen years, and then I fonnd 
her again, and that lasted a minute ! And they would take 
her from me again ! And now, when she is beautiful, when 
she is grown up, when she speaks to me, when she loves me ; 
it is now that they wonld corne to devonr her, before my very 
eyes, and I her mother ! Oh ! no ! these things are not pos- 
sible. The good God does not permit such things as that.” 

Here the cavalcade appeared to hait, and a voice was heard 
to say in the distance, — 

“This way, Messire Tristan ! The priest says that we shall 
find her at the Eat-Hole.” The noise of the horses began 
again. 

The recluse sprang to her feet with a shriek of despair. 

“Fly ! fly! my child ! Ail cornes back to me. You are 
right. It is your death ! Horror ! Malédictions ! Fly I ” 

She thrnst her head through the window, and withdrew it 
again hastily. 

“Eemain,” she said, in a low, cnrt, and lugubrions tone, as 
she pressed the hand of the gypsy, who was more dead than 


282 


NOTBE-T>AME. 


alive. Remain ! Do not breathe ! There are soldiers every- 
wliere. You cannot get out. It is too light.^ 

Her eyes were dry and burning. She remained silent for a 
moment ; but she paced the cell hurriedly, and halted now 
and then to pluck out handfuls of her gray hairs, which she 
afterwards tore with her teeth. 

Suddenly she said : ^^They draw near. I will speak with 
them. Hide yourself in this corner. They will not see you. 
I will tell them that you hâve made your escape. That I 
released you, i’ faith ! ’’ 

She set her daughter (down for she was still carrying her), 
in one corner of the cell which was not visible from without. 
She made her crouch down, arranged her carefully so that 
neither foot nor hand projected from the shadow, untied her 
black hair which she spread over her white robe to conceal 
it, placed in front of her her jug and her paving stone, the 
only articles of furniture which she possessed, imagining that 
this jug and stone would hide her. And when this was fin- 
ished she became more tranquil, and knelt down to pray. The 
day, which was only dawning, still left many shadows in the 
Rat-Hole. 

At that moment, the voice of the priest, that infernal voice, 
passed very close to the cell, crying, — 

^‘This way, Captain Phœbus de Châteaupers.’’ 

At that name, at that voice, la Esmeralda, crouching in her 
corner, made a movement. 

Do not stir ! ’’ said Gudule. 

She had barely finished when a tumult of men, swords, and 
horses halted around the cell. The mother rose quickly and 
went to post herself before her window, in order to stop it up. 
She belle Id a large troop of armed men, both horse and foot, 
drawn up on the Grève. 

The commander dismounted, and came toward her. 

Old woman ! said this man, who had an atrocious face, 
we are in search of a witch to hang her ; we were told that 
you had her.^^ 

The poor mother assumed as indifferent an air as she could, 
and replied, — 


THE LITTLE SIlOE. 




‘^1 know not what you mean.” 

The other resumed, Tête Dieu ! What was it that fright- 
ened archdeacon said ? Where is he ? ” 

Monseigneur/’ said a soldier, “ he has disappeared.” 

Corne, now, old madwoman,” began the commander again, 
“ do not lie. A sorceress was given in charge to you. What 
hâve you done with her ? ” 

The recluse did not wish to deny ail, for fear of awakening 
suspicion, and replied in a sincere and surly tone, — 

If you are speaking of a big young girl who was put into 
my hands a while ago, I will tell you that she bit me, and 
that I released her. There ! Leave me in peace.” 

The commander made a grimace of disappointment. 

Don’t lie to me, old spectre ! ” said he. My name is 
Tristan THermite, and I am the king’s gossip. Tristan the 
Hennit, do you hear ? ” He added, as he glanced at the Place 
de Grève around him, ’Tis a name which has an écho here.” 

‘‘You might be Satan the Hermit,” replied Gudule, who 
was regaining hope, “ but I should hâve nothing else to say to 
you, and I should never be afraid of you.” 

“ Tête-Dieu,’’^ said Tristan, “ here is a crone ! Ah ! So the 
witch girl hath fled ! And in which direction did she go ? ” 

Gudule replied in a careless tone, — 

“ Through the Eue du Mouton, I believe.” 

Tristan turned his head and made a sign to his troop to 
préparé to set ont on the march again. The recluse breathed 
freely once more. 

“ Monseigneur,” suddenly said an archer, “ ask the old elf 
why the bars of her window are broken in this manner.” 

This question brought anguish again to the heart of the 
misérable mother. Nevertheless, she did not lose ail presence 
of mind. 

“ They hâve always been thus,” she stammered. 

“ Bah ! ” retorted the archer, “ only yesterday they still 
formed a fine black cross, which inspired dévotion.” 

Tristan cast a sidelong glance at the recluse. 

“ I think the old dame is getting confused ! ” 

The unfortunate woman felt that ail depended on her self- 


284 


Nornr.-DAME. 


possession, and, althongh with death in her soûl, she began to 
grill. Mothers possess sucb strengtb. 

Bab ! said slie, the man is drunk. ’Tis more than a 
year since the tail of a stone cart dashed against my window 
and broke in the grating. And how I cursed the carter, too.^^ 

’Tis true,” said another archer, I was there.” 

Always and everywhere people are to be found who hâve 
seen everything. This unexpected testimony from the archer 
re-encouraged the recluse, whom this interrogatory was forc- 
ing to cross an abyss on the edge of a knife. But she was 
condemned to a perpétuai alternative of hope and alarm. 

If it was a cart which did it,’’ retorted the first soldier, 
^‘the stumps of the bars should be thrust inwards, while they 
actually are pushed outwards.’’ 

Hé ! hé ! said Tristan to the soldier, you hâve the nose 
of an inquisitor of the Châtelet. Eeply to what he says, old 
woman.’^ 

Good heavens ! ” she exclaimed, driven to bay, and in a 
voice that was full of tears in despite of her efforts, I swear 
to you, monseigneur, that ’twas a cart which broke those bars. 
You hear the man who saw it. And then, what has that to do 
with your gypsy ? 

Hum ! ’’ growled Tristan. 

‘‘ The devil ! ’’ went on the soldier, flattered by the provost’s 
praise, ^^these fractures of the iron are perfectly fresh.’’ 

Tristan tossed his head. She turned pale. 

How long ago, say you, did the cart do it ? ’’ 

A month, a fortnight, perhaps, monseigneur, I know not.’’ 

“ She first said more than a year,’’ observed the soldier. 

That is suspicions,” said the provost. 

Monseigneur ! ” she cried, still pressed against the open- 
ing, and trembling lest suspicion should lead them to thrust 
their heads through and look into her cell ; monseigneur, I 
swear to you that ’twas a cart which broke this grating. I 
swear it to you by the angels of paradise. If it was not a 
cart, may I be eternally damned, and I reject God ! ” 

“You put a great deal of beat into that oath,” said Tristan, 
with his inquisitorial glance. 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 


285 


The poor woman felt her assurance vanishing more and 
more. She had reached the point of blundering, and she com- 
prehended with terror that she was saying what she ought not 
to hâve said. 

Here another soldier came up, crying, — 

“Monsieur, the old hag lies. The sorceress did not flee 
through the E-ue de Mouton. The Street chain has remained 
stretched ail night, and the chain guard has seen no one pass.” 

Tristan, whose face became more sinister with every 
moment, addressed the recluse, — 

“ What hâve you to say to that ? ” 

She tried to make head against this new incident, — 

“ That I do not know, monseigneur ; that I may hâve been 
mistaken. I believe, in fact, that she crossed the water.’^ 

“ That is in the opposite direction,’’ said the provost, “ and 
it is not very likely that she would wish to re-enter the city, 
where she was being pursued. You are lying, old woman.” 

“And then,” added the first soldier, “there is no boat 
either on this side of the stream or on the other.” 

“She swam across,” replied the recluse, defending her 
ground foot by foot. 

“ Do women swim ? ” said the soldier. 

“ Tête Dieu ! old woman ! You are lying ! ” repeated Tris- 
tan angrily. “ I hâve a good mind to abandon that sorceress 
and take you. A quarter of an hour of torture will, perchance, 
draw the truth from your throat. Corne ! You are to follow 
us.” 

She seized on these words with avidity. 

“ As you please, monseigneur. Do it. Do it. Torture. I 
am willing. Take me away. Quick, quick ! let us set out at 
once ! — During that time,” she said to herself, “ my daughter 
will make her escape.” 

“ ’S death ! ” said the provost, “ what an appetite for the 
rack ! I understand not this madwoman at ail.” 

An old, gray-haired sergeant of the guard stepped out of 
the ranks, and addressing the provost, — 

“Mad in sooth, monseigneur. If she released the gypsy, it 
was not her fault, for she loves not the gypsies. I hâve been 


280 NOriîE-DAME. 

of the watch these fifteen years, and I hear lier every evening 
cursing the Bohemian women with endless imprécations. If 
the one of whoin we are in pursuit is, as I suppose, the little 
dancer with the goat, she .detests that one above ail the rest.^^ 

Gudule made an effort and said, — 

That one above ail.” 

The unanimous testimony of the men of the watch con- 
firmed the old sergeant’s words to the provost. Tristan 
l’Hermite, in despair at extracting anything from the recluse, 
turned his back on her, and with unspeakable anxiety she 
beheld him direct his course slowly towards his horse. 

Corne ! ” he said, between his teeth, March on ! let us 
set out again on the quest. I shall not sleep until that gypsy 
is hanged.” 

But he still hesitated for some time before mounting his 
horse. Gudule palpitated between life and death, as she 
beheld him cast about the Place that uneasy look of a hunt- 
ing dog which instinctively feels that the lair of the beast is 
close to him, and is loath to go away. At length he shook 
his head and leaped into his saddle. Gudule’s horribly com- 
pressed heart now dilated, and she said in a low voice, as she 
cast a glance at her daughter, whom she had not ventured to 
look at while they were there, “ Saved ! ” 

The poor child had remained ail this time in her corner, 
without breathing, without moving, with the idea of death 
before her. She had lost nothing of the scene between Gudule 
and Tristan, and the anguish of her mother had found its écho 
in her heart. She had heard ail the successive snappings of 
the thread by which she hung suspended over the gulf ; twenty 
times she had fancied that she saw it break, and at last she 
began to breathe again and to feel her foot on firm ground. 
At that moment she heard a voice saying to the provost : 
“ Corhæuf! Monsieur le Prévôt, Tis no affair of mine, a man 
of arm s, to hang witches. The rabble of the populace is sup- 
pressed. I leave y ou to attend to the matter alone. You will 
allow me to rejoin my company, who are waiting for their 
captain.” 

The voice was that of Phœbus de Châteaupers ; that which 


TUE LITTLE SUOE. 


287 


took place within lier was ineffable. He was there, lier friend, 
her protector, ber support, lier refuge, her Phœbus. She rose, 
and before her mother could prevent lier, she had rushed to 
the window, crying, — 

Phœbus ! aid nie, niy Phœbus ! ” 

Phœbus was no longer there. He had just turned the 
corner of the Pue de la Coutellerie at a gallop. But Tristan 
had not yet takeh his departure. 

The recluse rushed upon her daughter with a roar of agony. 
She dragged her violently back, digging her nails into her 
neck. A tigress mother does not stand on trilles. But it was 
too late. Tristan had seen. 

Hé ! hé ! he exclainied with a laugh which laid bare ail 
his teeth and made his face resemble the muzzle of a wolf, 
two mice in the trap ! ” 

“ I suspected as much,’^ said the soldier. 

Tristan clapped him on the shoulder, — 

“ You are a good cat ! Corne l’’ he added, ‘^where is Hen- 
riet Cousin ? ” 

A man who had neither the garments nor the air of a 
soldier, stepped from the ranks. He wore a costume half 
gray, half brown, Hat hair, leather sleeves, and carried a 
bundle of ropes in his huge hand. This man always attended 
Tristan, who always attended Louis XI. 

“Friend,’^ said Tristan l’Hermite, ‘H présumé that this is 
the sorceress of whom we are in search. You will hang me 
this one. Hâve you your ladder ? ” 

There is one yonder, under the shed of the Pillar-House,” 
replied the man. Is it on this justice that the thing is to 
be done ? ” he added, pointing to the stone gibbet. 

“Yes.’’ 

Ho, hé ! ’’ continued the man with a huge laugh, which 
was still more brutal than that of the provost, ^^we shall not 
hâve far to go.” 

^^Make haste ! ” said Tristan, ^^you shall laugh afterwards.” 

In the meantime, the recluse had not uttered another word 
silice Tristan had seen her daughter and ail hope was lost. 
She had Ilung the poor gypsy, half dead, into the corner of 


288 


NOTBE-BAME. 


the cellar, and had placed herself once more at the window 
with both hands resting on the angle of the sill like two 
claws. In this attitude she was seen to cast upon ail those 
soldiers her glance which had become wild and frantic once 
more. At the moment when Henriet Cousin approached her 
cell, she showed him so savage a face that he shrank back. 

“Monseigneur,” he said, returning to the provost, “which 
am I to take ? ” 

“ The young one.” 

“ So much the better, for the old one seemeth difficult.” 

“ Poor little dancer with the goat ! ” said the old sergeant 
of the watch. 

Henriet Cousin approached the window again. The mothePs 
eyes made his own droop. He said with a good deal of 
timidity, — 

“ Madam ” — 

She interrupted him in a very low but furious voice, — 

“ What do you ask ? ” 

“ It is not you,” he said, “ it is the other.” 

“ What other ? ” 

“ The young one.” 

She began to shake her head, crying, — 

“ There is no one ! there is no one ! there is no one ! ” 

“ Yes, there is ! ” retorted the hangman, “ and you know it 
well. Let me take the young one. I hâve no wish to harm 
you.” 

She said, with a strange sneer, — 

“ Ah ! so you hâve no wish to harm me ! ” 

“Let me hâve the other, madam; Tis monsieur the pro^ 
vost who wills it.” 

She repeated with a look of madness, — 

“There is no one here.” 

“I tell you that there is!” replied the executioner. “We 
hâve ail seen that there are two of you.” 

“ Look then ! ” said the recluse, with a sneer. “ Thrust 
your head through the window.” 

The executioner observed the mother’s finger-nails and 
dared not. 


THE LITTLE SUOE. 


289 


'^Make haste!’’ shouted Tristan, who had just ranged his 
troops in a circle round the Kat-Hole, and who sat on his 
horse beside the gallows. 

Henriet returned once more to the provost in great embar- 
rassment. He had flung his rope on the ground, and was 
twisting his hat between his hands with an awkward air. 

“ Monseigneur,” he asked, “ where am I to enter ? ” 
the door.” 

^^There is none.” 

By the window.” 

^^’Tis too small.” 

^^Make it larger,” said Tristan angrily. ^^Have you not 
pickaxes ? ” 

The mother still looked on steadfastly from the depths of 
her cavern. She no longer hoped for anything, she no longer 
knew what she wished, except that she did not wish them to 
take her daughter. 

Henriet Cousin went in search of the chest of tools for the 
night man, under the shed of the Pillar-House. He drew 
from it also the double ladder, which he immediately set up 
against the gallows. Five or six of the provost’s men armed 
themselves with picks ànd crowbars, and Tristan betook him- 
self, in company with them, towards the window. 

Old woman,” said the provost, in a severe tone, deliver 
up to us that girl quietly.” 

She looked at him like one who does not understand. 

Tête Dieu ! ” continued Tristan, why do you try to 
prevent this sorceress being hung as it pleases the king ? ” 

The wretched woman began to laugh in her wild way. 

a Why ? She is my daughter.” 

The tone in which she pronounced these words made even 
Henriet Cousin shudder. 

am sorry for that,” said the provost, ^^but it is the 
king’s good pleasure.” 

She cried, redoubling her terrible laugh, — 

‘‘ What is your king to me ? I tell you that she is my 
daughter ! ” 

^‘Pierce the wall,” said Tristan. 


290 


NOTEE-BAME. 


In order to make a sufficiently wide opening, it sufficed to 
dislodge one course of stone below the window. When the 
mother heard the picks and crowbars mining her fortress, she 
uttered a terrible cry ; then she began to stride about her cell 
with frightful swiftness, a wild beasts’ habit which her cage 
had imparted to her. She no longer said anything, but her 
eyes flamed. The soldiers were chilled to the very soûl. 

Ail at once she seized her paving stone, laughed, and hurled 
it with both fists upon the workmen. The stone, badly flung 
(for her hands trembled), touched no one, and fell short under 
the feet of Tristan’s horse. She gnashed her teeth. 

In the meantime, although the sun had not yet risen, it 
was broad daylight; a beautiful rose color enlivened the 
ancient, decayed chimneys of the Pillar-House. It was the 
hour when the earliest Windows of the great city open joy- 
ously on the roofs. Some workmen, a few fruit-sellers on 
their way to the markets on their asses, began to traverse the 
Grève ; they halted for a moment before this group of soldiers 
clustered round the Pat-Hole, , stared at it with an air of 
astonishment and passed on. 

The recluse had gone and seated herself by her daughter, 
covering her with her body, in front of her, with staring 
eyes, listening to the poor child, who did not stir, but who 
kept murmuring in a low voice, these words only, Phœbus ! 
Phœbus.!’’ In proportion as the work of the demolishers 
seemed to advance, the mother mechanically retreated, and 
pressed the young girl doser and doser to the wall. Ail at 
once, the recluse beheld the stone (for she was standing 
guard and never took .her eyes from it), move, and she heard 
Tristan’s voice encouraging the workers. Then she aroused 
from the dépréssion into which she had fallen during the last 
few moments, cried ont, and as she spoke, her voice now 
rent the ear like a saw, then stammered as though ail kind 
of malédictions were pressing to her lips to burst forth at 
once. 

^‘Ho! ho! ho! Why this is terrible! You are ruffians! 
Are you really going to take my daughter ? Oh ! the cowards ! 
Oh ! the hangman lackeys ! the wretched, blackguard assas- 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 291 

sins ! Help ! help ! lire ! Will they take my child from me 
like this ? Who is it then who is called the good God ? ’’ 

Then, addressing Tristan, foaming at the mouth, with wild 
eyes, ail bristling and on ail fours like a female panther, — 

“ Draw near and take my daughter ! Do not you under- 
stand that this woman tells you that she is my daughter ? Do 
you know what it is to hâve a child ? Eh ! lynx, hâve you 
never lain with your female ? hâve you never had a cub ? 
and if you hâve little ones, when they howl hâve you nothing 
in your vitals that moves ? ” 

Throw down the stone,’’ said Tristan ; it no longer 
holds.’’ 

The crowbars raised the heavy course. It was, as we hâve 
said, the mother’s last bulwark. 

She threw herself upon it, she tried to hold it back ; she 
scratched the stone with her nails, but the massive block, set 
in movement by six men, escaped her and glided gently to the 
ground along the iron levers. 

The mother, perceiving an entrance effected, fell down in 
front of the opening, barricading the breach with her body, 
beating the pavement with her head, and shrieking with 
a voice rendered so hoarse by fatigue that it was hardly 
audible, — 

Help ! lire ! lire ! ’’ 

How take the wench,’’ said Tristan, still impassive. 

The mother gazed at the soldiers in such formidable fashion 
that they were more inclined to retreat than to advance. 

Corne, now,’’ repeated the provost. Here you, Henriet 
Cousin ! ’’ 

No one took a step. 

The provost swore, — 

Tête de Christ ! my men of war ! afraid of a woman ! ’’ 

Monseigneur,’’ said Henriet, do you call that a woman ? ” 

She has the mane of a lion,” said another. 

Corne ! ” repeated the provost, the gap is wide enough. 
Enter three abreast, as at the breach of Pontoise. Let us 
make an end of it, death of Mahom ! I will make two pièces 
of the first man who draws back ! ” 


292 


NOTRE-DAME. 


Placed between the provost and tbe motber, both threaten- 
ing, the soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took tlieir reso- 
lution, and advanced towards the Kat-Hole. 

When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, 
flung aside her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed 
hands fall by her side. Then great tears fell, one by one, from 
her eyes ; they flowed down her cheeks through a furrow, like 
a torrent through a bed which it has hollowed for itself. 

At the saine time she began to speak, but in a voice ,so sup- 
plicating, so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that more 
than one old convict-warder around Tristan who must hâve 
devoured human flesh wiped his eyes. 

Messeigneurs ! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There 
is one thing which I must say to you. She is my daughter, 
do you see ? my dear little daughter whom I had lost ! 
Listen. It is quite a history. Consider that I knew the ser- 
geants very well. They were always good to me in the days 
when the little boys threw stones at me, because I led a life 
of pleasure. Do you see ? You will leave me my child when 
you know ! I was a poor woman of the town. It was the 
Bohemians who stole her from me. And I kept her shoe for 
fifteen years. Stay, here it is. That was the kind of foot 
which she had. At Eeims ! La Chantefleurie ! Rue Folle- 
Peine ! Perchance, you knew about that. It was I. ^ In your 
youth, then, there was a merry time, when one passed good 
hours. You will take pity on me, will you not, gentlemen ? 
The gypsies stole her from me; they hid her from me for 
fifteen years. I thought her dead. Fancy, my good friends, 
believed her to be dead. I hâve passed fifteen years here, in 
this cellar, without a fire in winter. It is hard. The poor, 
dear little shoe ! I hâve cried so much that the good God has 
heard me. This night he has given my daughter back to me. 
It is a miracle of the good God. She was not dead. You 
will not take her from me, I am sure. If it were myself, I 
would say nothing ; but she, a child of sixteen ! Leave her 
time to see the sun ! What has she done to you ? nothing 
at ail. Nor hâve I. If you did but know that she is ail I 
hâve, that I am old, that she is a blessing which the Holy 


THE LITTLE STIOE. 


293 


Virgin has sent to me ! And then, you are ail so good ! 
You did not know that she was my daughter ; but now you 
do know it. Oh ! I love her ! Monsieur, the grand provost. 
I would prefer a stab in my own vitals to a scratch on her 
hnger ! You hâve the air of such a good lord ! What I hâve 
told you explains the matter, does it not ? Oh ! if you hâve 
had a mother, monsiegneur ! you are the captain, leave me my 
child ! Consider that I pray you on my knees, as one prays 
to Jésus Christ! I ask nothing of any one; I am from 
E-eims, gentlemen; I own a little field inherited from my 
uncle, Mahiet Pradon. I am no beggar. I wish nothing, but 
I do want my child ! oh ! I want to keep my child ! The 
good God, who is the master, has not given her back to me 
for nothing ! The king ! you say the king ! It would not 
cause him much pleasure to hâve my little daughter killed ! 
And then, the king is good ! she is my daughter ! she is my 
own daughter ! She belongs not to the king ! she is not 
yours ! I want to go away ! we want to go away ! and when 
two women pass, one a mother and the other a daughter, one 
lets them go ! Let us pass ! we belong in Eeims. Oh ! you 
are very good, messieurs the sergeants, I love you ail. You 
will not take my dear little one, it is impossible ! It is 
utterly impossible, is it not ? My child, my child ! ” 

We will not try to give an idea of her gestures, her tone, 
of the tears which she swallowed as she spoke, of the hands 
which she clasped and then wrung, of the heart-breaking 
smiles, of the swimming glances, of the groans, the sighs, the 
misérable and affecting cries which she mingled with her dis- 
ordered, wild, and incohérent words. When she became silent 
Tristan V Hermite frowned, but it was to conceal a tear which 
welled up in his tiger’s eye. He conquered this weakness, 
however, and said in a curt tone, — 

<‘The king wills it.’’ 

Then he bent down to the ear of Henriet Cousin, and said 
to him in a very low tone, — 

‘‘ Make an end of it quickly ! ” Possibly, the redoubtable 
provost felt his heart also failing him. 

The executioner and the sergeants entered the cell. The 


294 


NOTBE-DAME. 


mother offered no résistance, only she dragged herself towards 
her daughter and threw herself bodily upon her. 

The gypsy beheld the soldiers approach. The horror of 
death reanimated her, — 

“ Mother ! ” she shrieked, in a tone of indescribable distress, 

Mother ! they are coming ! defend me ! ’* 

Yes, my love, I am defending y ou ! ” replied the mother, 
in a dying voice; aiid clasping her closely in her arms, she 
covered her with kisses. The two lying thus on the earth, 
the mother upon the daughter, presented a spectacle worthy 
of pity. 

Henriet Cousin grasped the young girl by the middle of 
her body, beneath her beautiful shoulders. When she felt 
that hand, she cried, Heuh ! and fainted. The executioner 
who was shedding large tears upon her, drop by drop, was 
about to bear her away in his arms. He tried to detach the 
mother, who had, so to speak, knotted her hands around her 
daughter’s waist ; but she clung so strongly to her child, that 
it was impossible to separate them. Then Henriet Cousin 
dragged the young girl outside the cell, and the mother after 
her. The mother’s eyes were also closed. 

At that moment, the sun rose, and there was already on the 
Place a fairly numerous assembly of people who looked on 
from a distance at what was being thus dragged along the 
pavement to the gibbet. For that was Provost Tristan’s way 
at executions. He had a passion for preventing the approach 
of the curions. 

There was no one at the Windows. Only at a distance, at 
the summit of that one of the towers of Notre-Daipe which 
commands the Grève, two men outlined in black against the 
light morning sky, and who seemed to be looking on, were 
visible. 

Henriet Cousin paused at the foot of the fatal ladder, with 
that which he was dragging, and, barely breathing, with so 
much pity did the thing inspire him, he passed the rope 
around the lovely neck of the young girl. The unfortunate 
child felt the horrible touch of the hemp. She raised her eye- 
lids, and saw the fleshless arm of the stone gallows extended 


THE LITTLE SHOE. 


295 


above ber liead. Then sbe shook herself and shrieked in a 
loud and heartrending voice : “ No ! no ! I will not ! ” Her 

mother, wbose bead was buried and concealed in ber daugb- 
ter’s garments, said not a word ; only ber wbole body could be 
seen to quiver, and sbe was beard to redouble ber kisses on 
ber cbild. Tbe executioner took advantage of this moment to 
hastily loose tbe arms witb wbicb sbe clasped tbe condemned 
girl. Eitber tbrougb exbaustion or despair, sbe let bim bave 
bis way. Tben be took tbe young girl on bis sboulder, from 
wbicb tbe cbarming créature bung, gracefully bent over bis 
large bead. ïben be set bis foot on tbe ladder in order to 
ascend. 

At tbat moment, tbe motber wbo was croucbing on tbe 
pavement, opened ber eyes wide. Witbout uttering a cry, sbe 
raised berself erect witb a terrible expression ; tben sbe flung 
berself upon tbe band of tbe executioner, like a beast on its 
prey, and bit it. It was done like a flasb of lightning. The 
beadsman bowled witb pain. Those near by rushed up. 
Witb difficulty they withdrew bis bleeding band from tbe 
mother’s teeth. Sbe preserved a profound silence. They 
thrust her back witb much brutality, and noticed tbat her 
bead fell heavily on tbe pavement. They raised her, sbe fell 
back again. Sbe was dead. 

Tbe executioner, wbo bad not loosed bis bold on tbe young 
girl, began ^o ascend tbe ladder once more. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CLAD IN WHITE. (Dante.) 

When Quasimodo saw that the cell was empty, that the 
gypsy was no longer there, tliat wMle he had been defending 
her she had been abducted, he grasped his hair with both 
hands and stamped with surprise and pain ; then he set ont 
to run through the entire church seeking his Bohemian, howl- 
ing strange cries to ail the corners of the walls, strewing his 
red hair on the pavement. It was just at the moment when 
the king’s archers were making their victorious entrance into 
Notre-Dame, also in search of the gypsy. Quasimodo, poor, 
deaf fellow, aided them in their fatal intentions, without sus- 
pecting it ; he thought that the outcasts were Jhe gypsy’s 
enemies. He himself conducted Tristan l’Hermite to ail pos- 
sible hiding-places, opened to him the secret doors, the double 
bottoms of the altars, the rear sacristries. If the unfortunate 
girl had still been there, it would hâve been he himself who 
would hâve delivered her up. 

When the fatigue of finding nothing had disheartened 
Tristan, who was not easily discouraged, Quasimodo con- 
tinued the search alone. He made the tour of the church 
twenty times, length and breadth, up and down, ascending 
and descending, running, calling, shouting, peeping, rummag- 
ing, ransacking, thrusting his head into every hole, pushing a 
torch under every vault, despairing, mad. A male who has 
lost his female is no more roaring nor more haggard. 

296 


THE BEAUTIFUL CREATUIiE CL AD IN WHITE. 297 

At last when lie was sure, perfectly sure that she ivas no 
longer there, that ail was at an end, that she had been 
snatched froin him, he slowly mounted the staircase to the 
towers, that staircase which he had ascended with so much 
eagerness and triumph on the day when he had saved her. 
He passed those saine places once more with drooping head, 
voiceless, tearless, almost breathless. The church was again 
deserted, and had fallen back into its silence. The archers 
had quitted it to track the sorceress in the city. Quasimodo, 
left alone in that vast Notre-Dame, so besieged and tumultu- 
ous but a short time before, once more betook himself to the 
cell where the gypsy had slept for so many weeks under his 
guardiànship. 

As he approached it, he fancied that he might, perhaps, find 
her there. When, at the turn of the gallery which opens on 
the roof of the side aisles, he perceived the tiny cell with its 
little window and its little door crouching beneath a great 
flying buttress like a bird’s nest under a branch, the poor 
man’s heart failed him, and he leaned against a pillar to keep 
from falling. He imagined that she might hâve returned 
thither, that some good genius had, no doubt, brought her 
back, that this chamber was too tranquil, too safe, too charm- 
ing for her not to be there, and he dared not take another step 
for fear of destroying his illusion. Yes,’^ he said to himself, 
^^perchance she is sleeping, or praying. I must not disturb 
her.’^ 

At length he summoned up courage, advanced on tiptoe, 
looked, entered. Empty. The cell was still empty. The 
unhappy deaf man walked slowly round it, lifted the bed and 
looked beneath it, as though she might be concealed between 
the pavement and the mattress, then he shook his head and re- 
mained stupefied. Ail at once, he crushed his torch under his 
foot, and, without uttering a word, without giving vent to a 
sigh, he flung himself at full speed, head foremost against the 
wall, and fell fainting on the floor. 

When he recovered his senses, he threw himself on the bed 
and rolling about, he kissed frantically the place where the 
young girl had slept and which was still warm ; he remained 


298 


NOTRE-DAME, 


there for several moments as motionless as though. he were 
about to expire; then he rose, dripping with perspiration, 
panting, mad, and began to beat bis head against the wall 
with the frightful regularity of the clapper of his bells, and 
the resolution of a man determined to kill himself. At length 
he fell a second time, exhausted ; he dragged himself on his 
knees outside the cell, and crouched down facing the door, in 
an attitude of astonishment. 

He remained thus for more than an hour without making a 
movenient, with his eye fixed on the deserted cell, more 
gloomy, and more pensive than a mother seated between an 
empty cradle and a full coffin. He uttered not a word ; only 
at long intervals, a sob heaved his body violently, but it was 
a tearless sob, like summer lightning which makes no noise. 

It appears to hâve been then, that, seeking at the bottom 
of his lonely thoughts for the unexpected abductor of the 
gypsy, he thought of the archdeacon. He remembered that 
Dom Claude alone possessed a key to the staircase leading 
to the cell ; he recalled his nocturnal attempts on the young 
girl, in the first of which he, Quasimodo, had assisted, the 
second of which he had prevented. He recalled a thousand 
details, and soon he no longer doubted that the archdeacon 
had taken the gypsy. Nevertheless, such was his respect for 
the priest, such his gratitude, his dévotion, his love for this 
man had taken such deep root in his heart, that they resisted, 
even at this moment, the talons of jealousy and despair. 

He reflected that the archdeacon had done this thing, and 
the wrath of blood and death which it would hâve evoked in 
him against any other person, turned in the poor deaf man, 
from the moment when Claude Frollo was in question, into an 
increase of grief and sorrow. 

At the moment when his thought was thus fixed upon the 
priest, while the daybreak was whîtening the flying buttresses, 
he perceived on the highest story of Notre-Dame, at the angle 
formed by the external balustrade as it makes the turn of the 
chancel, a figure walking. This figure was coming towards 
him. He recognized it. It was the archdeacon. 

Claude was walking with a slow, grave step. He did not 


THE BEAUTIFUL CBEATURE CL AD IN WHITE. 299 


look before him as he walked, he was directing bis course 
towards the northern tower, but bis face was turned aside 
towards tbe rigbt bank of tbe Seine, and he beld bis head 
bigh, as thougb trying to see sometbing over the roofs. The 
owl often assumes tbis oblique attitude. It Aies towards one 
point and looks towards another. In tbis manner tbe priest 
passed above Quasimodo witbout seeing bim. 

The deaf man, wbo bad been petrified by tbis sudden appa- 
rition, beheld him disappear tbrough tbe door of tbe staircase 
to tbe nortb tower. The reader is aware that tbis is tbe tower 
from which the Hotel-de-Ville is visible. Quasimodo rose and 
followed the archdeacon. 

Quasimodo ascended tbe tower staircase for the sake of 
ascending it, for tbe sake of seeing wby the priest was ascend- 
ing it. Moreover, the poor bellringer did not know wbat he 
(Quasimodo) should do, wbat be should say, wbat he wished. 
He was full of fury and full of fear. Tbe archdeacon and the 
gypsy bad corne into conflict in bis beart. 

Wben be reached the summit of the tower, before emerging 
from tbe shadow of tbe staircase and stepping upon tbe plat- 
form, he cautiously examined tbe position of the priest. The 
priest’s back was turned to him. Tbere is an openwork balus- 
trade which surrounds the platform of the bell tower. The 
priest, whose eyes looked down upon the town, was resting 
bis breast on that one of tbe four sides of tbe balustrades 
which looks upon the Pont Notre-Dame. 

Quasimodo, advancing witb the tread of a wolf behind him, 
went to see wbat he was gazing at thus. 

Tbe priesPs attention was so absorbed elsewhere that he 
did not hear the deaf man walking behind him. 

Paris is a magnificent and charming spectacle, and espe- 
cially at that day, viewed from the top of the towers of Notre- 
Dame, in the fresh light of a summer dawn. The day might 
hâve been in July. The sky was perfectly serene. Some 
tardy stars were fading away at varions points, and there was 
a very brilliant one in the east, in the brightest part of the 
heavens. The sun was about to appear j Paris was beginning 
to move. A very white and very pure light brought ont 


300 


NOTRE-DAME. 


vividly to the eye ail the outlines tliat its thousands of houses 
présent to the east. The giant shadow of the towers leaped 
from roof to roof, from one end of the great city to the other. 
There were several quarters from which were already heard 
voices and noisy sounds. Here the stroke of a bell, there the 
stroke of a hammer, beyond, the complicated clatter of a cart 
in motion. 

Already several columns of smoke Were being belched forth 
from the chimneys scattered over the whole surface of roofs, 
as through the fissures of an immense sulphurous crater. 
The river, which ruffles its waters against the arches of so 
many bridges, against the points of so many islands, was 
wavering with silvery folds. Around the city, outside the 
ramparts, sight was lost in a great circle of fleecy vapors 
through which one confusedly distinguished the indefinite 
line of the plains, and the graceful swell of the heights. Ail 
sorts of floating sounds were dispersed over this half-awakened 
city. Towards the east, the morning breeze chased a few soft 
white bits of wool torn from the misty fleece of the hills. 

In the Parvis, some good women, who had their milk jugs 
in their hands, were pointing ont to each other, with astonish- 
ment, the singular dilapidation of the great door of Notre- 
Dame, and the two solidified streams of lead in the crevices 
of the stone. This was ail that remained of the tempest of 
the night. The bonfire lighted between the towers by Quasi- 
modo had died out. Tristan had already cleared up the Place, 
and had the dead thrown into the Seine. Kings like Louis 
XI. are careful to clean the pavement quickly after a massacre. 

Outside the balustrade of the tower, directly under the 
point where the priest had paused, there was one of those 
fantastically carved stone gutters with which Gothic édifices 
bristle, and, in a crevice of that gutter, two pretty wallflowers 
in blossom, shaken out and vivified, as it were, by the breath 
of air, made frolicsome salutations to each other. Above the 
towers, on high, far away in the depths of the sky, the cries 
of little birds were heard. 

But the priest was not listening to, was not looking at, any- 
thing of ail this. He was one of the men for whom there are 


THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CL AD IN WHITE. 301 


no mornings, no birds, no flowers. In that immense horizon, 
which assumed so niany aspects about him, his contemplation 
was concentrated on a single point. 

Quasimodo was burning to ask him what lie had done with 
the gypsy ; but the archdeacon seemed to be out of the world 
at that moment. He was evidently in one of those violent 
moments of life when one would not feel the earth crumble. 
He remained motionless and silent, with his eyes steadily 
fixed on a certain point ; and there was something so terrible 
•about this silence and immobility that the savage bellringer 
shuddered before it and dared not corne in contact with it. 
Only, and this was also one way of interrogating the arch- 
deacon, he followed the direction of his vision, and in this 
way the glance of the unhappy deaf man fell upon the Place 
de Grève. 

Thus he saw what the priest was looking at. The ladder 
was erected near the permanent gallows. There were some 
people and many soldiers in the Place. A man was dragging 
a white thing, from which hung something black, along the 
pavement. This man halted at the foot of the gallows. 

Here something took place which Quasimodo could not see 
very clearly. It was not because his only eye had not pre- 
served its long range, but there was a group of soldiers which 
prevented his seeing everything. Moreover, at that moment 
the Sun appeared, and such a flood of light overflowed the 
horizon that one would hâve said that ail the points in Paris, 
spires, chimneys, gables, had simultaneously taken lire. 

Meanwhile, the man began to niount the ladder. Then 
Quasimodo saw him again distinctly. He was carrying a 
w^oman on his shoulder, a young girl dressed in white ; that 
young girl had a noose about her neck. Quasimodo recog- 
nized her. 

It was she. 

The man reached the top of the ladder. There he arranged 
the noose. Here the priest, in order to see the better, knelt 
upon the balustrade. 

Ail at once the man kicked away the ladder abruptly, and 
Quasimodo, who had not breathed for several moments, beheld 


302 


NOTRE-DAME. 


the unhappy child dangling at the end of the rope two fathoms 
above tbe pavement, with the man squatting on her shoulders. 
The rope made several gyrations on itself, and Quasimodo 
beheld horrible convulsions run along the gypsy’s body. The 
priest, on his side, with outstretched neck and eyes starting 
from his head, contemplated this horrible group of the man 
and the young girl, — the spider and the fly . 

At the moment when it was most horrible, the laugh of a 
démon, a laugh which one can only give vent to when one is 
no longer human, burst forth on the priest’s livid face. 

Quasimodo did not hear that laugh, but he saw it. 

The bellringer retreated several paces behind the archdea- 
con, and suddenly hurling himself upon him with fury, with 
his huge hands he pushed him by the back over into the abyss 
over which Dom Claude was leaning. 

The priest shrieked ; Damnation ! ’’ and fell. 

The spout, above which he had stood, arrested him in his 
fall. He clung to it with desperate hands, and, at the moment 
when he opened his mouth to utter a second cry, he beheld 
the formidable and avenging face of Quasimodo thrust over 
the edge of the balustrade above his head. 

Then he was silent. 

The abyss was there below him. A fall of more than two 
hundred feet and the pavement. 

In this terrible situation, the archdeacon said not a word, 
uttered not a groan. He merely writhed upon the spout, 
with incredible efforts to climb up again ; but his hands had 
no hold on the granité, his feet slid along the blackened wall 
without catching fast. People who hâve ascended the towers 
of Notre-Dame know that there is a swell of the stone imme- 
diately beneath the balustrade. It was on this retreating 
angle that misérable archdeacon exhausted himself. He had 
not to deal with a perpendicular wall, but with one which 
sloped away beneath him. 

Quasimodo had but to stretch out his hand in order to draw 
him from the gulf ; but he did not even look at him. He was 
looking at the Grève. He was looking at the gallows. He 
was looking at the gypsy. 


THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CL AD IN WRITE. 303 

The deaf man was leaning, with his elbows on the balus- 
trade, at the spot where the archdeacon had been a moment 
before, and there, never detaching his gaze from the only 
object which existed for him in the world at that moment, he 
remained motionless and mute, like a man struck by lightning, 
and a long stream of tears flowed in silence from that eye 
which, up to that time, had never shed but one tear. 

Meanwhile, the archdeacon was panting. His bald brow 
was dripping with perspiration, his nails were bleeding 
against the stones, his knees were flayed by the wall. 

He heard his cassock, which was caught on the spout, crack 
and rip at every jerk that he gave it. To complété his mis- 
fortune, this spout ended in a leaden pipe which bent under 
the weight of his body. The archdeacon felt this pipe slowly 
giving way. The misérable man said to himself that, when 
his hands should be worn out with fatigue, when his cassock 
should tear asunder, when the lead should give way, he would 
be obliged to fall, and terror seized upon his very vitals. Now 
and then he glanced wildly at a sort of narrow shelf formed, 
ten feet lower down, by projections of the sculpture, and he 
prayed heaven, from the depths of his distressed soûl, that he 
might be allowed to finish his life, were it to last two cen- 
turies, on that space two feet square. Once, he glanced 
below him into the Place, into the abyss ; the head which 
he raised again had its eyes closed and its hair standing 
erect. 

There was something frightful in the silence of these two 
men. While the archdeacon agonized in this terrible fashion 
a few feet below him, Quasimodo wept and gazed at the Grève, 

The archdeacon, seeing that ail his exertions served only to 
weaken the fragile support which remained to him, decided 
-to remain quiet. There he hung, embracing the gutter, hardly 
breathing, no longer stirring, making no longer any other 
movements than that mechanical convulsion of the stomach, 
which one expériences in dreams when one fancies himself 
falling. His fixed eyes were wide open with a stare. He lost 
ground little by little, nevertheless, his fingers slipped along 
the spout ; he became more and more conscious of the feeble- 


304 


NOTRE-DAME, 


ness of his arms and the weight of his body. The curve of 
the lead which. sustained him inclined more and more each 
instant towards the abyss. 

He beheld below him, a frightful thing, the roof of Saint- 
Jean le Kond, as small as a card folded in two. He gazed at 
the impressive carvings, one by one, of the tower, suspended 
like himself over the précipice, but without terror for them- 
selves or pity for him. Ail was stone around him ; before his 
eyes, gaping monsters ; below, quite at the bottom, in the 
Place, the pavement ; above his head, Quasimodo weeping. 

In the Parvis there were several groups of curions good 
peuple, who were tranquilly seeking to divine who the mad- 
man could be who was amusing himself in so strange a man- 
ner. The priest heard them saying, for their voices reached 
him, clear and shrill : Why, he will break his neck ! 

Quasimodo wept. 

At last the archdeacon, foaming with rage and despair, un- 
derstood that ail was in vain. Nevertheless, he collected ail 
the strength which remained to him for a final effort. He 
stilfened himself upon the spout, pushed against the wall with 
both his knees, clung to a crevice in the stones with his hands, 
and succeeded in climbing back with one foot, perhaps ; but 
this effort made the leaden beak on which he rested bend 
abruptly. His cassock burst open at the same time. Then, 
feeling everything give way beneath him, with nothing but 
his stiffened and failing hands to support him, the unfortunate 
man closed his eyes and let go of the spout. He fell. 

Quasimodo watched him fall. 

A fall from such a height is seldom perpendicular. The 
archdeacon, launched into space, fell at first head foremost, 
with outspread hands ; then he whirled over and over many 
times ; the wind blew him upon the roof of a house, where 
the unfortunate man began to break up. Nevertheless, he was 
not dead when he reached there. The bellringer saw him still 
endeavor to cling to a gable with his nails ; but the surface 
sloped too much, and he had no more strength. He slid rap- 
idly along the roof like a loosened tile, and dashed upon the 
pavement. There he no longer moved. 


THE BEAUTIFUL CREATURE CL AD IN WRITE, 305 


Then Quasimodo raised his eyes to the gypsy, whose body 
he beheld bangiiig from tlie gibbet, quivering far away beneath 
ber white robe with the last shudderings of anguish, then he 
dropped them on the archdeacon, stretched ont at the base of 
the tower, and no longer retaining the human form, and he 
said, with a sob which heaved his deep chest, — 

Oh ! ail that I hâve ever loved ! ’’ 




CHAPTER III. 

THE MARRIAGE OF PHŒBUS. 

Towards evening on that day,^ when the judiciary ofiicers 
of the bishop came to pick up from the pavement of tbe Par- 
vis the dislocated corpse of the archdeacon, Quasimodo had 
disappeared. 

A great many rumors were in circulation with regard to this 
adventure. No one doubted but that the day had corne when, 
in accordance with their compact, Quasimodo, that is to say, 
the devil, was to carry off Claude Frollo, that is to say, the 
sorcerer. It was presumed that he had broken the body 
when taking the soûl, like monkeys who break the shell to 
get at the nut. 

This is why the archdeacon was not interred in consecrated 
earth. 

Louis XI. died a year later, in the month of August, 1483. 

As for Pierre Gringoire, he succeeded in saving the goat, 
and he won success in tragedy. It appears that, after having 
tasted astrology, philosophy, architecture, hermetics, — ail 
vanities, he returned to tragedy, vainest pursuit of ail. This 
is what he called coming to a tragic end.’’ This is what is to 
be read, on the subject of his dramatic triumpha, in 1483, in 
the accounts of the ^^Ordinary:” ^^To Jehan Marchand and 
Pierre Gringoire, carpenter and composer, who hâve made and 
composed the mystery made at the Châtelet of Paris, at the 

306 


THE MARRIAGE OF PHŒBUS. 307 

entry of Monsieur tlie Legate, and hâve ordered the person- 
ages, clothed and dressed the same, as in the said mystery 
was rec[uired 5 and Uhewise, for having inade the scaffoldings 
thereto necessary ; and for this deed, — one hundred livres.” 

Phœbus de Châteaupers also came to a tragic end. He mar- 
ried. 






CHAPTER IV. 

THE MARRIAGE OF QUASIMODO. 

We hâve just said that Quasimodo disappeared from Notre- 
Dame on the day of the gypsy’s and of the archdeacon’s death. 
He was not seen again, in fact ; no one knew what had be- 
come of him. 

During the night which followed the execution of la Esiner- 
alda, the night men had detached her body from the gibbet, 
and had carried it, according to custom, to the cellar of Mont- 
faucon. 

Montfaucon was, as Sauvai says, ‘^the most ancient and the 
most superb gibbet in the kingdom.’^ Between the faubourgs 
of the Temple and Saint Martin, about a hundred and sixty 
toises fr^m the walls of Paris, a few bow shots from La 
Courtille, there was to be seen on the crest of a gentle, almost 
imperceptible eminence, but sufficiently elevated to be seen 
for several leagues round about, an édifice of strange form, 
bearing considérable resemblance to a Celtic cromlech, and 
where also human sacrifices were offered. 

Let the reader picture to himself, crowning a limestone hil- 
lock, an oblong mass of masonry fifteen feet in height, thirty 
wide, forty long, with a gâte, an external railing and a plat- 
form; on this platform sixteen enormous pillars of rough 
hewn stone, thirty feet in height, arranged in a colonnade 
round three of the four sides of the mass which support 
them, bound together at their summits by heavy beams, 

308 


THE MABUIAGE OF QUASIMODO. 


309 


whence hung chains at intervals ; on ail these chains, skele- 
tons ; in the vicinity, on the plain, a stone cross and two 
gibbets of secondary importance, which seemed to hâve sprung 
up as shoots around the central gallows ; above ail this, in 
the sky, a perpétuai flock of crows ; that was Montfaucon. 

At the end of the fifteenth century, the formidable gibbet 
which dated from 1328, was already very much dilapidated ; 
the beanis were wormeaten, the chains rusted, the pillars 
green with mould ; the layers of hewn stone were ail cracked 
at their joints, and grass was growing on that platform which 
no feet touched. The monument made a horrible profilé 
against the sky ; especially at night when there was a little 
moonlight on those white skulls, or when the breeze of even- 
ing brushed the chains and the skeletons, and swayed ail these 
in the darkness. The presence of this gibbet sufficed to 
render gloomy ail the surrounding places. 

The mass of masonry which served as foundation to the 
odious édifice was hollow. A huge cellar had been con- 
structed there, closed by an old iron grating, which was ont 
of order, into which were cast not only the human remains, 
which were taken from the chains of Montfaucon, but also 
the bodies of ail the unfortunates executed on the other per- 
manent gibbets of Paris. To that deep charnel-house, where 
so many human remains and so many crimes hâve rotted in 
company, many great ones of this world, many innocent people, 
hâve contributed their bones, from Enguerrand de Marigni, the 
first victim, and a just man, to Admirai de Coligni, who was 
its last, and who was also a just man. 

As for the mysterious disappearance of Quasimodo, this 
is ail that we hâve been able to discover. 

About eighteen months or two years after the events which 
oerminate this story, when search was made in that cavern for 
tue body of Olivier le Daim, who had been hanged two days 
px -"viousty, and to whom Charles VIII. had granted the favor 
of being buried in IBaint Laurent, in better company, they 
fouiid among ail those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one 
of v^hich held the other in its embrace. One of these skele- 
tons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a 


810 


NOTBE-DAME. 


garment which had once been white, and around her neck was 
to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag 
ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty, 
These objects were of so little value that the execiitioner had 
probably not cared for thein. The other, which held this one 
in a close einbrace, was the skeleton of a inan. It was noticed 
that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his 
shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. 
Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebræ at the nape 
of the neck, and it was évident that he had not been hanged. 
Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had corne thither 
and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton 
which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust. 





NOTE 


ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION. 


It is by mistake that this édition was announced as aug- 
mented by inany new cliapters. The word should hâve beeii 
unpublished. In fact, if by new, neioly made is to be under- 
stood, the chapters added to this édition are not new. They 
were written at the saine time as the rest of the work ; they 
date from the same epoch, and sprang from the same thought, 
they hâve always formed a part of the manuscript of Notre- 
Dame-de-Paris.’’ Moreover, the author cannot comprehend 
how fresh developments could be added to a work of this 
character after its completion. This is not to be done at 
will. According to his idea, a romance is born in a nianner 
that is, in some sort, necessary, with ail its chapters ; a drama 
is born with ail its sceiies. Think not that there is anything 
arbitrary in the numbers of parts of which that whole, that 
inysterious microcosm which you call a drama or a romance, 
is composed. Grafting and soldering take badly on works of 
this nature, which should gush forth in a single streain and 
so reraain. The thing once done, do not change your mind, 
do not touch it up. The book once published, the sex of the 
work, whether virile or not, has been recognized and pro- 
claimed ; when the child has once uttered his first cry he is 
born, there he is, he is made so, neither father nor mother 
can do anything, he belongs to the air and to the sun, let 
him live or die, such as he is. Has your book been a failure ? 
So much the worse. Add no chapters to an unsuccessful 
book. Is it incomplète? You should hâve completed it 
when you conceived it. Is your tree crooked ? You cannot 
straighten it up. Is your romance consumptive ? Is your 


312 NOTE ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION. 

romance not capable of living ? You caiinot supply it with 
the breath which it lacks. Has your draina been born lame ? 
Take my advice, and do not provide it with a wooden leg. 

Hence the author attaches particular importance to the 
public knowing for a certainty that the chapters here added 
hâve not been made expressly for this reprint. They were 
not published in the preceding éditions of the book for a very 
simple reason. At the time when “ Notre-Dame-de-Paris ’’ was 
printed the first time, the manuscript of these three chapters 
had been mislaid. It was necessary to rewrite them or to 
dispense with them. The author considered that the only 
tvvo of these chapters which were in the least important, 
owing to their extent, were chapters on art and history which 
in no way interfered with the groundwork of the draina and 
the romance, that the public would not notice their loss, and 
that he, the author, would alone be in possession of the 
secret. He decided to omit them, and then, if the whole 
truth must be confessed, his indolence shrunk from the task 
of rewriting the three lost chapters. He would hâve found it 
a shorter matter to make a new romance. 

Now the chapters hâve been found, and he avails hirnself of 
the first opportunity to restore them to their place. 

This now, is his entire work, such as he dreamed it, such 
as he made it, good or bad, durable or fragile, but such as he 
wishes it. 

These recovered chapters will possess no doubt, but little 
value in the eyes of persons, otherwise very judicious, who 
hâve sought in “ Hotre-Dame-de-Paris ” only the drama, the 
romance. But there are perchance, other readers, who hâve 
not found it useless to study the æsthetic and philosophie 
thought concealed in this book, and who hâve taken pleasure, 
while reading ‘^Notre-Hame-de-Paris,” in unravelling beneath 
the romance something else than the romance, and in follow- 
ing (may we be pardoned these rather ambitions expressions), 
the System of the historian and the aim of the artist through 
the création of the poet. 

Por such people especially, the chapters added to this 
édition will complété Notre-Dame-de-Paris,” if we admit 


NOTE ADDED TO THE DEFINITIVE EDITION. 313 

that “ Notre-Dame-de-Paris ” was worth the trouble of com- 
pleting. 

In one of these chapters on the présent decadence of archi- 
tecture, and on the death (in his mind almost inévitable) of 
that king of arts, the author expresses and develops an opinion 
unfortunately well rooted in hiin, and well thought ont. But 
he feels it necessary to say here that he earnestly desires that 
the future inay, some day, put hini in the wrong. He knows 
that art in ail its forms has everything to hope from the new 
générations whose genius, still in the germ, can be heard gush- 
ing forth in our studios. The grain is in the furrow, the har- 
vest will certainly be fine. He merely fears, and the reason 
inay be seen in the second volume of this édition, that the sap 
may hâve been withdrawn from that ancient soil of architec- 
ture which has been for so many centuries the best field foi- 
art. 

Nevertheless, there are to-day in the artistic youth so much 
life, power, and, so to speak, prédestination, that in our 
schools of architecture in particular, at the présent time, the 
professors, who are détestable, produce, not only unconsciously 
but even in spite of themselves, excellent pupils ; quite the 
reverse of that potter mentioned by Horace, who dreamed 
amphoræ and produced pots. Currit rota, urcens exit. 

But, in any case, whatever may be the future of architec- 
ture, in whatever manner our young architects may one day 
solve the question of their art, let us, while waiting for new 
monuments, preserve the ancient monuments. Let us, if pos- 
sible, inspire the nation with a love for national architecture. 
That, the author déclarés, is one of the principal aims of this 
book ; it is one of the principal aims of his life. 

Notre-Dame-de-Paris ’’ has, perhaps opened sonie true per- 
spectives on the art of the Middle Ages, on that marvellous 
art which up to the présent time has been unknown to some, 
and, what is worse, misknown by others. But the author is 
far from regarding as accomplished, the task which he has 
voluntarily imposed on himself. He has already pleaded on 
more than one occasion, the cause of our ancient architecture, 
he has already loudly denounced many profanations, many 


314 NOTE ADDED TO THE DEJ^INITIVE EDITION. 


démolitions, many impieties. He will not grow weary. He 
has promised himself to recur frequently to this subject. He 
will return to it. He will be as indefatigable in defending 
OUI historical édifices as our iconoclasts of the schools and 
academies are eager in attacking them ; for it is a grievous 
thing to see into wbat hands tlie architecture of the Middle 
Ages has fallen, and in what a manner the botchers of plaster 
of the présent day treat the ruin of this grand art. It is even 
a shame for us intelligent men who see them at work and con- 
tent ourselves with hooting them. And we are not speaking 
here merely of what goes on in the provinces, but of what is 
done in Paris at our very doors, beneath our Windows, in the 
great city, in the lettered city, in the city of the press, of word, 
of thought. W e caiinot resist the impulse to point ont, in con- 
cluding this note, some of the acts of vandalism which are 
every day planned, debated, begun, continued, and successfully 
completed under the eyes of the artistic public of Paris, face 
to face with criticisni, which is disconcerted by so much au- 
dacity. An archbishop’s palace has just been demolished, an 
édifice in poor taste, no great harm is done ; but in a block 
with the archiépiscopal palace a bishop’s palace has been demol- 
ished, a rare fragment of the fourteenth century, which the 
demolishing architect could not distinguish from the rest. 
He has torn up the wheat with the tares ; ’tis ail the same. 
They are talking of razing the admirable chapel of Vincennes, 
in order to make, with its stones, some fortification, which 
Daumesnil did not need, however. While the Palais Bourbon, 
that wretched édifice, is being repaired at great expense, gusts 
of wind and equinoctial storms are allowed to destroy the 
magnificent painted Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle. For the 
last few days there has been a scaffolding on the tower of 
Saint Jacques de la Boucherie ; and one of these mornings the 
pick will be laid to it. A mason has been found to build a 
little white house between the venerable towers of the Palais 
de- Justice. Another has been found willing to prune away 
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the feudal abbey with three bell tow- 
ers. Another will be found, no doubt, capable of pulling down 
Saint-Germain PAuxerrois. Ail these masons daim to be 


KOTE ADDED TO THE DEFINÎTlVE EDITION, 

architects, are paid by the préfecture or from the petty bud- 
get, and wear green coats. Ail the harm which false taste 
can inflict on good taste, they accomplish. While we write, 
déplorable spectacle I one of them bolds possession of the 
Tuileries, one of them is giving Philibert Delorme a scar across 
the middle of his face ; and it is not, assuredly, one of the 
least of the scandais of our time to see with what effrontery 
the heavy architecture of this gentleman is being flattened 
over one of the most délicate façades of the Kenaissance 1 


Paris, October 20, 1832. 




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